


an animal within an animal

by mooosicaldreamz



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/F, the infamous victorian vibrator au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 07:43:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14765445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooosicaldreamz/pseuds/mooosicaldreamz
Summary: Lena is on her fifth sleepless night in a row when her dear friend Jess suggests she visit a doctor for her troubles. Her suggestion is given slyly, a smirk painted on Jess’s face. This smirk has not always ended well for Lena, but she is desperate, overcome with shocking thoughts and tossing and turning, and so she accepts a recommendation: a Dr. Danvers, of Marylebone.This moment is one she will spend her life looking back on, at times rueing and others thanking a giving and kind God for.or, Lena is a Victorian woman with hysteria, and Kara is a kind Doctor with just the help she needs.





	an animal within an animal

**Author's Note:**

> Couple things: 1) Yes, I have, at times, fundamentally and intentionally misunderstood history, the constraints, and the freedoms of the Victorian era. If you are of the Victorian era or you are a student of it, you might find yourself annoyed. Sorry. 2) A thank you is owed to my baeta, lynnearlington, who suffered mightily but to whom I owe all happinesses in life. Additional thanks to my dear friends aron and biscuit, who have hounded me relentlessly. Hope it lives up to the hype. 3) The title comes from a truly awesome quote from Cappadocian physician Aretaeus. He described the womb as "an animal within an animal," and that's an example, I think, of why we should all be so glad that vibrators did end up getting invented.

Lena is on her fifth sleepless night in a row when her dear friend Jess suggests she visit a doctor for her troubles. Her suggestion is given slyly, a smirk painted on Jess’s face. This smirk has not always ended well for Lena, but she is desperate, overcome with shocking thoughts and tossing and turning, and so she accepts a recommendation: a Dr. Danvers, of Marylebone.

This moment is one she will spend her life looking back on, at times rueing and others thanking a giving and kind God for. During the moment, Jess smirks on and Lena pours an inordinate amount of sugar in her tea to encourage wakefulness, and they go on to discuss the horridness of the weather.

-

Dr. Danvers is a spry, tall woman who wears trousers and a waistcoat. She is dressed rather like any other doctor, and there are many along Harley Street, where Dr. Danvers’s practice is tucked away. It is a shock to find that Lena has been sent to see a woman doctor, and her expression must shift in some way, because the doctor smiles with uncommonly bright, straight teeth.

“Dr. Kara Danvers,” she says, reaching one hand between them. Lena extends her own hand, gloved as it is. The doctor’s hands are not gloved, though this makes sense. They are cracking along her knuckles, dry in the cold London air. Her accent is not of London or even of England, and Lena is again surprised. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Luthor.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Lena returns. She drops the chill of the doctor’s hand, and turns to eye the small sitting room in the front of her practice. It is well-appointed, decorated with paintings, including a requisite portrait of the Queen herself which hangs just near the door. There are no patients to be seen, but it is clear enough from the finery of the furniture to the fabric of the doctor’s waistcoat that her exam table is often filled. There is even a desk for a secretary, though it is empty at the moment.

Something about her statement has struck Dr. Danvers as amusing, as she is smiling again. She regards Lena kindly, not with the sharp eyes she often travels among.

“So, Miss Luthor, what brings you to my practice?” Kara asks. She steps aside, extending her arm toward the door at the back of the room, which presumably leads towards the examination room. Lena brushes past the warmth of the doctor’s body, feels it as though it were a blanket, and urges herself not to shiver. The doctor pushes the door open for her, and she enters into a white tiled room which looks similar to any other doctor’s office but for the largeness of the room and the small sitting area placed to look out over Harley street itself.

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” Lena says. Dr. Danvers drifts closer to the sitting area, leaning over the back of the couch to look down on the snowy street Lena’s just come in from. When she turns back, she is nodding to herself.

“Bad dreams? May I take your coat?” Dr. Danvers asks. Lena allows the doctor to place her hands gently on Lena’s shoulders, pulling the warm coat away. She settles it on a hook next to the window, and waits almost gallantly for Lena to settle on the wide couch before she takes her own seat at the accompanying armchair.

“Not bad dreams, no,” Lena says. She attempts to think over what little dreams she’s had, but there is only flashes of heat and feeling that enhance her confusion. She sighs. “I’ve felt a strange feeling in my lower stomach, as well.”

“Have you also experienced wetness between the legs? Some irritability?” Dr. Danvers asks. She is relaxed into her chair, perfectly at ease discussing the inner workings of Lena’s body. There is something soothing in the calm she exudes, and Lena finds her eyes settling on Dr. Danvers’s clear blue ones without worry.

“Yes,” Lena says, softly. “It’s been rather disconcerting, to say the least.”

“I understand why it would be,” Dr. Danvers says. She sits forward, rolling up the sleeves on her shirt. It is more skin than Lena has seen on a woman besides her own body in years, and she finds her eyes drawn to the short stretch of flesh. “Well, Miss Luthor, your symptoms are not anything unusual. In fact, I’d imagine you were recommended to my clinic because I specialize in treating hysteria.”

“Hysteria,” Lena repeats. Her eyes are still on the skin of Dr. Danvers’s forearms. Her hands are rubbing together slowly as she looks back at Lena.

“It’s perfectly natural,” Dr. Danvers says. She stands from her armchair and moves toward a cabinet on the side of the room, and when she opens it, Lena is confronted with a mass of metallic objects that defy any known explanation. “There is a simple procedure to cure it. I can certainly help you.”

“If you have an answer to what’s plagued me, I would pay any amount,” Lena says. Dr. Danvers laughs, reaching for one of the items in the cabinet and withdrawing it. Her forearms strain; it must be an exceptionally heavy thing. Its use is a mystery. 

“Hysteria is a recurring illness, Miss Luthor. My first treatment is one I offer as a courtesy,” the doctor says. She fiddles with a small piece of rubber affixed to one end of the device, tugging it off and moving over to the sink.

“You are too kind, Dr. Danvers,” Lena says. She watches as the doctor runs water over the piece of rubber, holding it up to the soft light drifting in from the street. “Okay. What must I do? There’s no bleeding involved in this, is there?” 

“Lord no,” Dr. Danvers says, and she nods towards the other side of the room, where a hanging curtain blocks off a corner of the room. “Just remove your clothing and lie back on the table.”

Lena freezes for a moment. Dr. Danvers doesn’t seem to notice, reattaching the rubber piece to the metal device and humming something under her breath before she turns around and notes that Lena has not moved from her seat.

“If you don’t feel comfortable, I don’t mind your leaving,” Dr. Danvers says. She smiles so kindly that Lena finds herself relaxing again. She stands from her seat, moving toward the curtain, her fingers brushing against the buttons of her bodice. Dr. Danvers returns to her absent humming as she fiddles with her device.

“What brings an American to London for a practice?” Lena asks. It is perhaps impolite to ask such a question without much warning, but she feels the slightest bit unbalanced by this whole ordeal; she is certain that she is experiencing a bout of hysteria at this very moment. Dr. Danvers gives a small, breathy laugh that helps her become aware of the same wetness the doctor had described.

“Would you believe me if I said my sister was offered a position at Scotland Yard?”

“I suppose I will have to, considering my life will be in your hands,” Lena says. This prompts a bout of laughter from the doctor, and Lena smiles at the joyfulness of it. Her bodice comes free and she places it on a chair to her left. She starts in, then, on her skirts, layered as they are.

“You are in no danger of dying,” Dr. Danvers returns.

“I would take even a little bit of death if it would cure me,” Lena says. She pulls her skirts over her head, dropping them on the chair as well. The whiteness of her underclothes seems glaring in the dim light of Dr. Danvers’s office, and she realizes that the doctor has moved to close the curtains. 

“ _La petite mort,_ ” Dr. Danvers says, a smile stretching across her face. “Then a little death you shall have.”

“I didn’t realize Americans sought to teach themselves French,” Lena says. The small buttons of her corset cover seem a mystery to her fingers as she fumbles her way through them. Dr. Danvers laughs again.

“I lived near the Canadian border when I was young,” Dr. Danvers says. “Let me know if I can help you with your corset, or if I can provide you with anything to make you feel more comfortable.”

“I don’t suppose you have any brandy hidden away?” Lena says. Her hands manage to sift through the mass of buttons on her corset cover then, and the corset itself is revealed. Her maid this morning had helped her bind it tightly, and without a mirror, her hands are uncertain as she feels the laces.

“I will make sure to have that for you if you come back,” Dr. Danvers says. “Though, alcohol can sometimes impede the procedure’s success.”

“I believe I will need your help with this corset, Dr. Danvers,” Lena says, and the shadow of the doctor’s form arrives just on the other side of the curtain. The corner of the room she’s ensconced in seems much too small as Dr. Danvers arrives with a soft smile, pushing aside the fabric separating them. Lena turns as suddenly as her eyes connect with the soft blue of the doctor’s.

“May I?” the doctor asks, and Lena nods, closing her eyes as something like a fit comes over her when the doctor’s hands brush the top of her shoulders and settle on the laces of her corset. Dr. Danvers is dextrous, either quick with her fingers or well-practiced in doing this for her other patients, because the corset comes free nearly as quickly as the other woman had arrived.

“Thank you,” Lena says, her voice croaking. When she turns again, the doctor is still holding the corset, a strange expression on her face as she regards Lena. Whatever it is passes suddenly, as Dr. Danvers places the corset on the chair and moves away again.

“Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with,” Dr. Danvers murmurs. She moves back beyond the curtain, and Lena is left a swirling mass of hot and cold. Hysteria indeed.

-

When she exits from behind the curtain, Dr. Danvers is sitting on a stool at the foot of the examination table, holding what seems to be the handle end of the strange metal device and adjusting the other end of it. It clicks as she moves the rubber piece around and around. When she glances up, she smiles.

  
“Lie back,” she says, and Lena moves towards the padded exam table then. The surface is cold, still a little damp, as though Dr. Danvers has just washed it with a cloth. “What I’m going to do may seem foreign to you, and if you become too uncomfortable, just tell me. But the procedure does work if you allow it to.”

“If you’re certain there are no needles or bleeding, I’m inclined to trust you, Dr. Danvers,” Lena says. She lies back slowly, settling her head on a soft pillow and blinking her eyes shut once before she looks down her body to Dr. Danvers. The other woman has pushed the fabric on her arms up higher, past the elbow, as she sets the device down on a table adjacent to her stool and reaches for a bottle of oil.

“Attempt to hold still, if you can,” Dr. Danvers says. “I’ve been told I have cold hands.”

And Dr. Danvers settles back on her stool, her hands now slick with oil, and reaches forward. Her hands land at the apex of Lena’s thighs, slipping through the coarse hair there, and Lena gasps, can’t help but squirm. The doctor’s hands are cold, and slippery, and the skin she’s placed them on is hot and sensitive. Her touch only seems to promote this anxious feeling. 

“Spread your legs, please,” Dr. Danvers says. Lena complies, feeling the tight feeling in her stomach grow ever stronger at the action. She watches as the doctor’s fingers slip lower, tracing the skin and promoting more wetness. Something terrifying happens; Dr. Danvers’s index finger slips between the folds of skin and skips past something sensitive, as though it were a wound. Lena can’t help but jolt as something blindingly hot slips through her body, arcing through her nerves. Her exposed breasts seem to tighten, the area just below the doctor’s fingers aches for something that Lena cannot quite understand.

She has heard of something like this in her time, but has never experienced it, has never thought she might need it. She isn’t sure, even now, if she does, but the surety with which Dr. Danvers manipulates her makes her feel capable of proceeding. And Dr. Danvers keeps going, her finger dipping lower and teasing at the sensitive stretch of skin surrounding the hole there. Though she had wet her fingers with oil, Lena is aware enough to know that none was necessary.

“This is the entrance to your cunt,” Dr. Danvers says, very softly. Lena stares at the other woman as her finger slowly, very slowly, dips inside of Lena. It is an extraordinary feeling, and something unnatural is happening to her, something hot building inside of her as Dr. Danvers’s finger slips further inside of her. For some reason, in this moment, Lena’s eyes are again drawn to the doctor’s forearm, exposed to the air and free from its shirt.

The doctor adjusts the placement of her hands. One finger remains inside of her. Every time it moves, even just the slightest bit, Lena feels a great moving where there is a small one. Her cheeks feel warm in what had formerly been a cold room. Dr. Danvers’s other hand spreads the folds apart and her fingers easily find whatever great button they had slipped past before. She nearly comes off the exam table when Dr. Danvers etches a circle around the thing.

“This is your clit,” she says. Her eyes are so blue and intense, almost supernatural as they regard Lena. Her hands are certainly gifted with some sort of heretofore unknown magic; Lena is certain that death is approaching her and Dr. Danvers is the specter of Hades himself. The doctor draws another circle around the so-named clit, and Lena cannot help but close her eyes and tilt her head back. “It is a nervepoint with great capability of feeling. My device will be able to manipulate it so that you may experience release from your hysteria, but if you are ever so inclined, you may use your own fingers.”

This is when Dr. Danvers withdraws her hand from where it taps it Lena’s clit, reaches for the metallic device to her side, and flips a switch. A great mechanical humming noise comes out of the thing, and Lena realizes exactly what’s to happen just as the rubber pad of the device comes to rest against her newly-found clit.

It is something approaching rapturous. Her eyes clenched shut, she attempts to remain as still as possible as the feeling within her grows impossibly large, filling her gut and making her fingers clench into the padded table and the pillow underneath her head. Dr. Danvers’s finger moves slowly but surely, pulling from Lena’s cunt before it slides back in, adding an additional stimuli to whatever Lena’s undergoing.

She feels hot, and frenzied, and the muscles of her stomach feel drawn as tightly as a bow as Dr. Danvers enters her and her fingers drag against the inside of Lena. The device is motored on by something that makes it vibrate, and when it is pressed expertly against Lena’s clit, her legs shake.

“Your cunt is growing tight, which means you are close to paroxysm,” Dr. Danvers says. “Don’t be afraid of it. I’m right here.”

Lena is not quite sure what Dr. Danvers means until she is on the cusp of something unimaginable. Her body is wrought with tension and heat, and she feels the lone finger inside her more acutely than she has felt anything perhaps in her whole life. She opens her eyes for one moment to find Dr. Danvers eyeing her with intensity, her gaze focused on Lena’s face, and then, suddenly, Lena is flying.

Her body is wracked with shivers that nearly dislodge the device between her legs, but Dr. Danvers presses firm with it. It feels as though she is pulsing, in the way that one can become acutely aware of one’s blood moving about one’s body. The doctor’s finger is tugged tighter by muscles that were unknown only minutes before, producing a wave of feeling within her that had been heretofore unimaginable. Her skin ripples with goosebumps, her nipples hardening to stiff points, and she is suddenly spent as Dr. Danvers withdraws the device and slowly withdraws her finger, slipping it past her clit one last time. Her body lifts off the table as another rumble moves through her at the light touch.

Lena lies on the table, half-aware of the sounds of Dr. Danvers moving about the room, of water running. She can hear her heartbeat softening in her own ears, breath which she had not realized she had lost returning to her chest. When she opens her eyes once more, Dr. Danvers is standing at Lena’s side, pressing a cold, damp hand to Lena’s bare shoulder. It shoots warmth through her.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Danvers asks. She has pulled her shirtsleeves back down and buttoned them again at her wrists, a smile again at her face. Lena takes a moment to take stock of herself. There is a certain calmness that drifts through her now, a suffusion of warmth as her muscles rest and her mind drifts to silence.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Danvers,” she says, sitting forward suddenly and reaching to wrap her arms around the other woman in a hug that seems to surprise her. It takes a moment of Lena’s fingers drifting over the fabric of the doctor’s waistcoat before the hug is returned in a small way. Dr. Danvers’s one hand pats Lena gently on the upper back, just below her neck, and she is reminded suddenly that she is as nude as a babe.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says, drawing backwards just as suddenly as she had reared up. “But you’ve done it. I feel - exhausted. Like I could sleep for hours.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Miss Luthor,” Dr. Danvers says, stepping away from Lena. For a moment, she misses the warmth of her.

“Lena,” she corrects before thinking twice of it.

Dr. Danvers inclines her head to the side as she moves towards the door. “If you are Lena, you may call me Kara,” the other woman says, a grin alighting her face again. “You may wish to dress before you fall asleep on your carriage ride home. I’ll leave you to it.”

She nearly has the door open, out of Lena’s space before Lena strikes out with something more to say.

“Thank you again, Kara,” Lena says. Kara smiles.

When she finally arrives home, she drifts into her rooms as though she were a ghost, barely acknowledging the butler when he takes her coat. She falls asleep only seconds after managing to remove her corset, and successfully sleeps for twelve hours.

Thank God himself for Dr. Kara Danvers.

-

She finds herself days later riddled with dreams that have narrowed their focus to blue eyes and strong fingers. They keep her awake as she attempts to sleep, and she spends a few hours staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom before she thinks to attempt to touch herself in a way similar to how Kara had touched her.

It is by no means proper, she knew. But her needs are desperate, and she knows the way. At the first touch to the heated skin of her cunt, she can’t help but let out a moan she fears might wake one of the servants. Endeavoring to keep quiet, she flips over and buries her too-warm face in the pillow. But her fingers are uneducated and not half so talented as Kara’s; she slides her way to the so-called paroxysm Kara had achieved almost accidentally. By the time she realizes it’s happening, she’s already lost half of the feeling of it to the past.

This is how she ends up at Harley Street again, pushing the door open to reveal the sitting room of the practice. The secretary’s desk which had been empty on her first visit is occupied by a short man with hair styled in accordance with the times who stood upon her entrance.

“Hello, ma’am,” he says. “Are you here for an appointment?”

“I was hoping to make one or be seen as soon as possible,” Lena says. She tightens her coat about her frame as the man settles back into his desk and looks over the appointment book in front of him. It is scratched over, filled to the brim. It seems as though Dr. Kara Danvers is a popular choice.

“Well, Kara is scheduled to leave off after this last appointment, but Miss Avendon often finishes quickly,” the man says, reaching for another book and flipping through it quickly. It is a patient book, with names and notes. She wonders what might be written under her entry. As he does so, a loud, vulgar moan sounds from behind the closed exam room door, and it carries on for longer than Lena could imagine possible. The man pays no mind to the sound. It affects Lena more than she would care to admit, heat rushing between her legs. She sits primly on the edge of one of the armchairs available and the man looks back to her.

“Are you a returning patient? I can’t say I’ve seen you before,” he says.

“I was here almost a week ago. Miss Luthor,” she says. The man blinks a little as though the name strikes him as familiar. Perhaps it might, considering her family’s involvement in the construction of new railways and other land developments around the country.

“Miss Luthor, yes, here you are,” he says, landing on a page where her name seems to have been entered. “Well, it’s lovely to meet you Miss Luthor. I’m Mr. Winn Schott, Dr. Danvers’s secretary. If you’d like, we could work to find space in your calendar to schedule future appointments. I’m afraid Dr. Danvers is ever so popular." 

The door opens suddenly, and Kara steps free of the room, leaning against the door and eyeing the ceiling. The bun her hair is in has several flyaways after a day of work, and she has foregone even her waistcoat. Her blue eyes track to Lena immediately.

“Miss Luthor,” she says. Her hands, still wet with water, grip Lena’s gloved hand with warmth and a gentle strength. “What brings you around Harley Street this evening?”

“I had thought you might have time for an appointment, but it seems my hopes for today have been dashed,” Lena says. Kara turns to look at Mr. Schott. Whatever look she gives him has his eyebrows raising.

“There’s room still in my day,” Kara says. “I had a large lunch anyway, Winn. Alex will not mind my not arriving in time for dinner.”

“Alex is still in Cornwall,” Winn says, his voice almost reprimanding. Kara’s face reflects a certain discontent at the reminder, and she nods.

“Right. Then I most certainly have time for you, Miss Luthor,” Kara says. “After Miss Avendon clears out, I will clean up a little and see to you immediately.”

The voice of the apparent Miss Avendon rings from inside the room, then, interrupting Lena’s reply.

“Dr. Danvers! Would you mind helping me lace my corset?”

Something about the request prompts giggles from Mr. Schott, and a roll of the eyes from Kara. She offers one last smile to Lena before calling a barely cheerful _of course_ and enters the room again. Lena turns her eyes to Mr. Schott, who is still shaking with silent laughter.

“Miss Avendon is a rather eager patient,” Mr. Schott says. “Her husband is in the Navy, off sailing around the Channel. She misses him dearly.”

“It would seem so,” Lena says. Kara is in the sitting room again in moments, tossing a towel towards a basket of linens behind Mr. Schott’s desk.

“Did she ask for you to help her breasts sit right again?” Mr. Schott asks. Kara blushes, almost cherubic, and she tosses a glance in Lena’s direction as though Mr. Schott is saying something improper. Lena supposes, in the end, that it is improper - if her mother were sitting near her, she’d imagine Lillian would have plenty of things to say about the cavalier way in which Mr. Schott was speaking.

“She did not, thankfully,” Kara finally replies, after she seems content that Lena is not about to scold them. She takes a few steps into the sitting room and collapses into the armchair across from Lena, her limbs sprawling every which way. It is childlike, and Lena finds herself endeared to the doctor. “Please write a note that I need to switch devices on her next time. She apparently finds the Manipulator uninteresting.”

“You wouldn’t think so, with her carrying on like a tomcat in the night,” Mr. Schott says. Kara tilts her head in his direction as though she is allowing the point, but her eyes settle on Lena and a smile comes calmly over her face.

“I apologize if we speak too crudely, Miss Luthor. In this business, the lewd becomes commonplace,” Kara says. She crosses her legs then, adjusting her pant leg.

“It is certainly more interesting than the tearoom at Harrod’s. And you may certainly call me Lena, as I told you before,” Lena says. Kara nods, her head tilting forward heavily until she looks down at herself.

“Where in this blasted office did I leave my waistcoat?” Kara asks. “You might’ve told me I looked like a fool, Winn.”

“You don’t look a fool,” Lena says, before Winn can respond. Something about her response seems to make Kara relax, and she smiles softly at Lena, softening back into her chair and blinking her eyes shut. She looks tired, and Lena feels altogether rude for requesting an appointment when the doctor has had a full day of them. Before she can call the whole thing off, Miss Avendon is sweeping into the room. Kara and Winn stand at nearly the same time, and Lena rises a little slower. Lena does not know her, but she recognizes the flush on her cheeks and the easy way she swings her parasol as she makes her way to Kara.

“Dr. Danvers, you are simply a genius,” she says, her fingers reaching out in the distance between Kara and herself. The four inhabitants of the room watch as the woman, her hair a honeyed brown which is plated down her back in a braid, briefly touches the white shirt Kara is wearing. From the corner of her eye, Lena notes Winn almost burst into laughter again.

“Thank you, Miss Avendon,” Kara says, shifting away from the woman’s reach and moving closer to the door. “Until next time?”

“Indeed, ma’am,” she says. Lena does not mistake the way the woman’s parasol taps lightly against the outside of Kara’s leg as she makes her way down the steps and into the London evening. When Kara closes the door again, Winn has burst into full-blown gales of laughter.

“At some point, you’re going to have to push her off,” Winn says. Kara shakes her head, glaring heavily at her secretary as she moves across the sitting room towards Lena. “She flirts with you as though her husband has gone and died defending the Channel.”

“I’m perfectly aware, Winslow,” Kara says. “You may leave for the night. I know James is certainly waiting at a pub down the street.”

“Are you sure? I can do more bookkeeping,” Winn says, even while he reaches for his coat and draws it over his shoulders. Kara waves him off, and he gives a brief nod to Lena and imitates the tap of Miss Avendon’s parasol on Kara’s leg before he’s out the door.

“He’s been complaining of wanting a pint since noon,” Kara says, turning and offering a hand to Lena. She takes it, and the reason why she had arrived her in such a rush returns in full force. Heat moves through her body and centers itself low in her stomach. Kara’s eyes are so very blue and growing darker as the sun sets on Londontown. “May I take your coat?”

Lena shakes herself out of it, Kara’s fingers slipping underneath the collar and brushing briefly against Lena’s shoulders. She sets the coat on the couch and retakes Lena’s hand, holding it aloft as though they were about to begin a dance in a ballroom.

“How has your day been proceeding, Lena?” Kara asks, pressing the door to her exam room open and allowing Lena to go on ahead of her. Their hands are still joined when Kara settles on the stool still placed at the foot of the exam table, and Lena lets go of it as she settles her hands on the buttons of her bodice. Kara does not seem perturbed when she begins working them free mere feet away, uncovered by the privacy curtain. 

“Altogether horribly,” Lena says. Kara gives a small laugh, reaching her hands above her head and straightening her spine. It gives a resounding crack that seems to bring relief to the other woman. “I woke at three o’clock this morning after a hysterical dream, and then my dear mother demanded we meet my brother for breakfast. It went on from there and I felt...overcome, as it were. I thought it best to see you as soon as possible.”

“I’m sorry to hear your day has not been so wonderful,” Kara says. “Forgive me for asking, but your last name, Luthor - ”

“The very same one you are most likely thinking of, yes,” Lena says. She tosses the bodice of her dress over Kara’s shoulder, to the couch in the small sitting area. The curtains are drawn still, presumably from Miss Avendon’s session.

“You are certainly the closest to royalty as has come through my practice,” Kara says, smiling as Lena begins working on pulling her skirts over her head. The other woman disappears from Lena’s vision for a moment as she does so, but she is still looking at Lena altogether pleasantly after she’s removed the offending garments. It is rare enough to find someone with such a simple and kind opinion of her family that she finds herself smiling back.

“Surely only because of your lack of exposure. If the Empire knew of your skill, I believe even Empress Frederick would find her way to your practice,” Lena says. With her skirts free, she sets to working on the corset cover.

“You are too kind, Lena,” Kara says, and Lena eyes the other woman’s practical boots as they shift on the tiled floor of the examination room. “I must say, seeing the parade of clothing I do at this practice, I am ever so grateful I’ve chosen a career wherein a dress and bustle would be rather impractical.”

Lena picks her eyes up from the ground to see Kara watching her unbutton her corset cover with amusement. Lena cannot help but laugh in agreement.

“Tell me of your day, then,” Lena says. “I have seen Miss Avendon.”

“My goodness, Miss Avendon,” Kara says, leaning back in her stool so far that Lena is certain that she will tip backwards, but she only climbs off the thing and moves towards her curiosity cabinet, picking out a device with a belled end to it, different than the last one. “I charge her an extra five pounds a session and still she comes back.”

“Do you often find yourself being pursued by inverts?” Lena asks. Kara laughs, settling the device on the table next to her stool and sitting on it again. She takes Lena’s corset cover from her hands when she is free of it, gently tossing it to the couch behind her. Kara puts one finger in the air and spins it in a loose circle gesture that Lena understands as an instruction to turn around. Kara’s fingers land on the laces of her corset then, pulling them free.

“In general, I find they do not prefer the label of invert,” Kara says. “I see them occasionally, certainly, but it’s rather more often that I find women who are lonely, without their husbands to entertain them, like Miss Avendon. They seem to mistake me for a seatfiller of some kind.”

Kara’s hands are strong as they shake loose Lena’s corset, but her hands also do not seem so quick-witted as they were last time, or as they must have been with Miss Avendon. It is almost leisurely and friendly, the way the maid speaks to Lena in the morning as they discuss the day’s agenda and weather while she dresses.

“That must be a strange position to find yourself in,” Lena says, and she finds herself leaning backwards just slightly into the strength of Kara’s hands. She startles when the base of her spine hits the hard point of Kara’s knee. Kara doesn’t seem to mind, though, just finishes pulling the corset free of Lena.

“I have grown used to it. My sister claims I’ve grown blind to impropriety, but I feel I’ve just grown a new definition of it,” Kara says. “Besides Miss Avendon, the day has been busy but simple.”

“And you are missing Alex in Cornwall,” Lena says, trying to keep the curiosity out of her voice. But she finds herself eager to hear Kara Danvers speak more, to learn about her.

  
“She’s been off with the Yard attempting to solve some dastardly theft case, yes,” Kara says. “Her letters make it sound like she’s a regular Dupin.”

“So you weren’t lying when you said your sister was a part of Scotland Yard,” Lena says. Kara nods as Lena begins pulling her underskirt off. Her eyes drift to Lena’s shoes after Lena begins work on her undershirt, and she gestures again at Lena, tapping on the edge of the examination table. Once Lena is settled, she reaches for Lena’s dangling left foot, setting in on the buttons there.

“I do not tend to lie to patients about much anything. There is no point in it,” Kara says. She places Lena’s foot on her lap to get a better shot at the buttons of the boot.

“I did admire that you sought to explain what it was you were doing,” Lena says. “I attempted to mimic your work a few days ago to minor success.”

“Many a doctor on this street does something like what I do,” Kara says, and she shrugs then, picking her eyes up from Lena’s foot to look her in the eye. The unerring blue of them again shocks at Lena’s core. “It is not something only a doctor can do, I assure you. If you were to study the history of this art, you’d find that its purview has been intentionally narrowed for the profit of a few. I attempt to teach the women who come to me a way to help themselves, so that they are not hoodwinked any longer.”

“And you continue hoodwinking them if they come back?” Lena asks, somewhat teasing. Kara smiles at that, returning her eyes to the boot and pulling it free from Lena’s foot when she’s finished. She reaches for its twin, settles it again in the warmth of her lap. Lena has managed to pull her undershirt free and is left in her slip and stockings now, free to simply watch Kara’s fingers move dexterously down her boot.

“Most of the women who come back can afford to do so,” Kara says, tilting her head to the side. Her tongue peaks out of her mouth as she works at a difficult button. “Eventually, my devices will find their way into catalogues and I will find my practice much more sedate.”

“You think none of the magnetism is your own?” Lena asks. Kara pulls Lena’s other boot free, dropping it to the side. Lena stands from the table, reaching for the top button of her combination. She is close enough to Kara that they are in their own bubble of body heat, though Kara seems content in it. She looks to the side, picking up her fearsome machine and flicks at the switch. The distinct rumble it produces sends a flood of wetness through Lena. When Kara’s eyes reconnect with Lena’s, she smirks as though she knows exactly what she’s done.

“I suspect my success is based more on my mechanical capabilities than my charming bedside manner,” Kara says. Lena watches as her eyes glance to Lena’s now freed chest, her nipples hardening slightly in the colder air of the room.

“I find you charming, if my opinion matters,” Lena says. Kara smiles, shakes her head as Lena steps free of her combination and removes her stockings. Her eyes seem to attach themselves to Lena’s face.

“Thank you,” Kara says. “Make yourself comfortable.”

-

For the second time in one week, Lena finds her clit assaulted by one of Dr. Kara Danvers’s devices. The other woman is intent, her eyes half-lidded as she looks over Lena’s body and presses the thing between her legs ever tighter. Her aim is true, even when Lena squirms a little too much. But it seems as though her body is resistant to the treatment, somehow, and Lena cannot help but whine a little as paroxysm escapes her once more.

“Pluck your nipples,” Kara says. One of Lena’s clenched hands slips from the edge of the table to her own chest, and when she even brushes the hardened flesh there, her hips jump. When her eyes connect with Kara’s, down her body, the other woman nods in something like encouragement. When Lena squeezes and rolls the flesh, the feeling grows tenfold.

It still doesn’t seem like it’s working, though, even after she tortures her dusky nipples, wringing them for some small joy. It feels as though her cunt is throbbing, begging for release. She groans, loudly, when Kara resettles the angle of the device and it hits a somehow different space on her body.

Frustration wracks through Lena. Kara seems to sense it, fiddling with the device’s settings until it tunes downward in frequency.

“What do you need, Lena?” Kara asks. “I can switch to another device, if you’d like.”

Lena is uncertain that she has an answer until it falls from her mouth in a gasp.

“Your fingers,” Lena says. “Please.”

She sights Kara as she pauses in her ministrations. She seems to contemplate something, her eyes focused on Lena’s cunt until she nods to herself. Her hand reaches forward at the same time she pulls the still-shuddering device slightly away from Lena. The shock that befalls Lena body is immense; Kara’s fingers are cold and slip through her lips so easily that it must verge on obscenity. Kara’s face remains somewhat impassive as she focuses, but the intensity of her gaze provokes a fresh wave of hysteria in Lena.

Her hands return, unbidden, to her nipples as Kara’s fingers gather wetness and circle the entrance to her cunt. One slips inside as though it were a warmed knife slipping through softened butter; Lena feels its every small facet as though it were a knife just the same. Just like that, paroxysm seems far more in reach.

“Touch your clit,” Kara says. Lena frees one hand from its desperate plucking and in her eagerness, knocks her hand against Kara’s before she manages to circle the small bit that seemed to be a conduit for a myriad of feeling. Lena watched Kara’s face as she slid her finger over it, up and down. She could feel her cunt tightening on Kara’s lone finger.

“Vary your approach,” Kara coached. “Try circles. Or side to side.”

Lena tries. The changes seemed to surprise her body even though the instructions had been heard. She was sweating, chasing the feeling of Kara’s finger inside her, and she could hear a distant, distinct whining noise escaping her throat every time her finger brushed over the apex of her clit.

Kara was knocking her hand away and the device was back before Lena could think, and then she was flying. Her body clenched - her back arched from the exam table with a sticky sound, her cunt twitched around Kara’s finger, and she bore down on it as her hips shook against the rubber of the vibrating device.

She came back to herself slowly, her body twitching when Kara removes her hand from Lena’s cunt and pulls away the magical instrument that had soothed her so well that she was certain she could not walk. 

“Are you alright?” Kara asks, settling the device again on the table to her side and standing from her stool. Lena blink her eyes shut as she listens to Kara wash away Lena’s wetness from her fingers and the device.

  
“You are rather good at your job, is all,” Lena says. This prompts a laugh from Kara that has Lena smiling as well.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kara says. “I can leave the room while you get dressed?”

“I’m certain I will be able to move in just a few moments,” Lena says. Kara laughs again, reaching out a damp hand and pulling Lena to a seated position on the table once Lena grips her fingers.

-

She returns a week later, after a rather disturbing theatrical production wherein a lady went without stockings or corset in front of her maid. The audience had gasped upon the entrance of the actress; even from a distance, Lena could read the wry smile gracing her angular and sculpted face. 

“Miss Luthor,” Winn says in greeting. “Dr. Danvers just ran down the street to purchase some oil, but she shall be back momentarily. I’ll send her in when she returns?”

Lena nods, moving into the adjacent exam room without much fear. A keen sense of excitement is buzzing about her lower abdomen, in fact. Her hysteria has relaxed somewhat now that it’s being treated by Dr. Kara Danvers and her capable hands, but there is still a restlessness in her that she becomes almost painfully aware of at the thought of the good doctor.

She undresses leisurely, eyeing the clean room as she does. Kara keeps a tidy exam room. There is no hint of what obscene things might have been occurring before Lena’s arrival - she gives herself a moment to imagine it, reclining on the exam table and draping her coat over herself to protect against the draftiness.

Dr. Kara Danvers, greeting a woman having just walked through the door with her trademark smile. Walking her through what she had informed Lena of - the woman’s clit, her cunt, wet with hysteria. The gentle way Kara’s fingers would tread through the folds. The blue of her eyes, intent on the area, the exactness of her movements as she settled the device against the woman’s body.

Lena’s own fingers are drifting now, her eyes closing.

In her imagination, Kara does away with the device when Lena lets out a haphazard sound. The vibrations are pleasant, of course, but simple - there is something more powerful in the warmth and knowingness of Kara’s fingers, one pressing inside of her. And, yes, that is her she is picturing in her mind’s eye, the pale skin and particular arrangement of freckles down her body making it clear.

Her own finger slips over her cunt, sodden as it is. The door opens at nearly the same time as her body jolts beneath her coat.

Kara freezes in the doorway, her eyes wide as she takes in the sight before her. Lena imagines she must look a fright. The buzzing sensation in her lower stomach has burst outward across her body, as though it were overrun by blustering beasts. There is a hot feeling overtaking her; she hasn’t felt so ill with this for a time.

“Lena,” Kara says. She presses the door closed and her voice croaks and Lena’s fingers slip along the lips of her cunt and Kara smiles and Lena’s hips jump again. “It doesn’t look as though you need me.”

“I do need you,” Lena says. Something about this statement seems to slow Kara even more as she sets a large bottle of oil on her table and takes off her coat to reveal her full waistcoat and trousers. “I’m sorry - I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay,” Kara says. She turns to look at Lena in a way that seems observational, clinical. “Keep touching yourself. Perhaps you can learn what helps you best.”

The answer is in her mind before she necessarily thinks it; her finger edges inside her cunt suddenly, swallowed up by the wetness there and encased in a warmth that she has never traversed before. The angle is challenging and her reach is limited, but she manages to hook her finger and prompt a roll of her hips.

Her eyes remain on Kara Danvers, who is taking a deep breath and settling on the stool at the end of the exam table. Her blue eyes seem incapable of settling on any one thing. Her eyes alight on Lena’s face and then drift down the covered slope of her body. Lena hears a whine fall out of her lips as she manipulates her cunt, and Kara’s eyes drift toward the evidence of movement.

“Do you want help from a device?” Kara asks. Her voice is low, full of concentration. Lena is nodding nearly before the sentence is finished, and Kara stands again to reach for her cabinet, withdrawing a new device with a rounded head. Lena keeps moving her finger, feels the barest slide of her palm against the slickness of her clit. When Kara resettles on the stool, she places one hand on the edge of Lena’s coat, drifting sidewards and slipping off the table.

“May I?” Kara asks. Lena nods, but Kara’s hand remains calmly gripping the coat, clearly still waiting.

  
“Yes,” Lena says. With that, Kara tugs the garment from atop her body, gathering it with one hand and tossing it towards the lounge seat across the way. She’s warm enough now that the rush of cold air on her body doesn’t shock her, but the feeling of Kara’s hand briefly touching her thigh does. She jolts; Kara removes her hand just as suddenly as it appeared.

“You’re easily startled,” Kara says, with a small laugh. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Lena says. Now that she’s been revealed, Kara’s eyes have centered themselves between her legs, watching the work of Lena’s fingers with a critical eye. Unbidden, a flash of Kara hovering over her, one finger playing at her nipples and the other fingering her cunt rushes through her. She feels the muscles around her finger flutter at the very thought.

“You seem...capable of taking care of yourself,” Kara says. Her eyes are still looking down at the mess of Lena’s hand and cunt have created, a twisted tableau of movement and wetness. “I’m not so sure you need the aid of the device at all.”

Her face is flush, her hands splayed out visibly on the exam table, inches away from Lena’s body. And her eyes watch. Something in the look of Kara Danvers at the moment sends a rush of heat from Lena’s toes to the tips of her hair, because she spasms around her own finger, her cunt throbbing its way through paroxysm and a shout making its way out of her throat.

When it’s over and she feels as though she’s stopped twitching, she opens her eyes to find Kara Danvers looking at her with a smile on her face.

“How do you feel?” she asks. Lena can’t help but laugh then, and Kara’s smile grows wider.

“I feel...hysterical, still,” Lena says. Kara nods, her eyes glancing again down to Lena’s cunt, where her finger is tracing along the folds there. It’s an unconscious thing, a tease that seems to give rise to the briefly sated feelings inside her.

“Do you need another?” Kara asks, her hands reaching for the device and flipping a switch on its side. It begins emitting a loud noise that makes her cunt twitch heavily. 

“I can have another?” Lena asks. The act of causing one’s own paroxysm seemed scandalous enough, even under the watchful eye of a doctor. Seeking another seemed greedy.

“Of course,” Kara says, shrugging. “My record is eight.”

“Eight,” Lena says faintly. She wants to ask if that record is Kara’s own record for herself or for a patient, but her thoughts flee her when Kara again touches her thigh, her palm warm against the already hot skin there. She is smiling cheerfully, looking at Lena kindly. Her palm does not grip so much as soothe. “Yes. I want another.”

“Okay,” Kara says. “I can give you another." 

-

Kara’s press of the device is insistent, and Lena feels as though she cannot hold still for fear of death itself. She knows her cunt is soaked, knows the exam table underneath her is slippery. Her fingers play at her nipples, pinching them. Kara is intent again, and the minutes press on as she circles closer and closer to her second arrival. 

But she needs something extra. She knows it, and Kara does too.

“Do you need my fingers?” Kara asks. The question alone, the very suggestion, seems to push Lena to the very edge of the cliff she’s been advancing towards with determination. She nods frantically, pushing her hips closer to the device pressed harshly into her clit. Kara’s hand brushes against the inner half of her thigh, and then it’s tracing through her folds, gathering wetness along the surface.

One finger slips into her easily, and she feels like she’s almost there - almost there -

Kara adds a second finger and she falls apart. Her vision goes spotty and the harsh sound roaring through her drowns out the side of the device or the wet sound of Kara’s fingers working her through paroxysm. They withdraw eventually, leaving Lena relaxed on the table, eyes closed. A peaceful silence eventually settles around her ears.

"Might you consider...being a test subject?" the doctor asks, voice hesitant. Lena is still in the throes of a crippling joy radiating through her, but the softness of Kara’s voice draws her out of it with kindness.  
  
"A test subject?" she repeats. She's breathless. Kara adjusts her eyeglasses with her dry hand, standing up from her seat and moving towards the sink. She does not turn back towards Lena as she answers.  
  
"For my designs," Kara says. "You seem...responsive. You wouldn’t be my patient, of course, but I - well. If it’s not something you’d be interested in, please tell me now before I talk myself in circles.”

“A test subject,” Lena says again, prompting a laugh from Kara as she settles the device on the counter and turns the faucet on. Lena watches her hands slip beneath the water, weaving their way carefully through it.

“A friend who tests my devices,” Kara says. “How about this - we attend dinner down the street and we talk it over. I’m sure you could use some food. And I’m starving.”

“Am I not a good enough patient?” Lena asks. Kara lets out a laugh that seems caught in her throat, turning off the faucet and reaching for a linen towel on the counter. She directs a glance in Lena’s direction before she returns her attention to her hands.

“You don’t need to be cured, Lena,” Kara says. “And I like you well enough to not use you for money.”

Lena finds herself pausing at the statement and the genuine way Kara’s delivered it. For much of her life, her family has been badgered by hangers-on attempting to reach after their fortune and power. Lillian and Lex seemed less than troubled by it, seemed content to bask in the attention, but Lena had scarcely encountered what felt like a real interaction her whole life.

And yet...Kara Danvers held Lena in the palm of her hand and did not want to take what Lena would willingly give.

“Okay,” she says.

-

Lena isn’t quite sure why it comes as a surprise, but Kara Danvers is a delight. She is witty, kind, and her smile is bright when the server at the restaurant recognizes her and waves them in. Over the next fortnight, she sees Kara Danvers twice a week and lies back on her exam table and allows Kara to explain at length the mechanics of whatever new device she’s dreamt up. Afterwards, they go to a cascade of restaurants near Kara’s port of call and talk.

Though occasional patrons sneer at the image of a woman in a man’s clothes accompanied only by another woman, many of them seem to know Kara and greet her companionably. The waiter does not even ask for what Kara might like to drink, just brings an Irish whisky that reminds Lena of her brother’s study.

On their fourth dinner, Kara has just finished telling an uproarious story over her playing a sport called broomball with neighborhood boys in her childhood when a man comes by and taps Kara on the shoulder, a large smile on his face.

“Kara Danvers, as I live and breathe,” the man says. He’s got a bright smile, a top hat on his head, and Lena watches as his bare hand presses into Kara’s shoulder near where it drifts into her neck. His fingertips rest just the slightest on bare skin.

“James!” Kara says, standing suddenly from the table and wobbling it as she does. “It’s so wonderful to see you! I thought you were going to be in Sandringham for the whole of the next month!”

“I thought so as well, but the master of the house was called to London for business,” James says, with a roguish wink. His hand still rests on Kara’s shoulder and they embrace - it is far and away beyond propriety. Lena finds herself blinking in shock.

“Oh, I’m so sorry - this is Miss Lena Luthor, and Lena, this is Mr. James Olsen. He’s a photographer from the _Daily Planet_ on permanent stay here with the Prince of Wales,” Kara says, grinning and gripping at the lapel on Mr. Olsen’s coat. “Miss Luthor is a friend of mine, James.”

James smiles at Lena in a charming way, though he does not take his hand off Kara when he extends his other to Lena. She places hers in his, and he raises it to his lips like a proper gentleman. 

“We should catch up, when you’re available,” James says after he lets loose of Lena’s hand and turns back to Kara. “Lucy keeps requesting a visit to your place of work as an anniversary gift.”

“Alex should be back in any day now,” Kara says, a blush high on her cheeks as James smiles. “And Winn has missed you dearly. I will certainly call on you.”

“I look forward to it,” James says. “I’ll be off now. It was wonderful to see you, Kara. And to meet you, Miss Luthor.”

He gives her a nod and squeezes again at Kara’s shoulder, brushing above the collar of her shirt. And then he’s off, and Kara is waving as he makes his way out the door. She resettles just as suddenly as the man had breezed through, a large smile on her face as she looked to Lena.

“Sorry for the disturbance,” Kara says. “He’s been traveling for months.”

“He seems like a dear friend,” Lena says. Kara’s smile grows ever larger and her eyes twinkle beneath her eyeglasses at the statement.

  
“He is,” Kara says. “He, Alex, and I all met on the same steamer coming over from America. Well, I knew Alex already, obviously, as she’s my sister. Adoptive sister. You’ll see, though, when she finally comes home, how alike we are.”

“Oh, I’ll be meeting your sister?” Lena asks. Kara blinks at her.

“Well of course,” Kara says. “We’re friends.”

The confidence with which Kara says it, the sincerity with which it exits her mouth, has Lena believing. 

-

“You know, Lena, you never told me if you visited that doctor I spoke to you about,” Jess says. The polo match they’re at is well attended and so she speaks with some discretion, her eyes glancing about. Lena’s cheeks warm considerably at the very thought of her last visit with Kara, one where Kara had wanted to test out a strange new device that was meant to produce suction over the clit.

It had been a smashing success. 

“I did visit her,” Lena says. Sitting on her other side, a cucumber sandwich halfway to her mouth, is Samantha Arias, who laughs at the look on Lena’s face. The women’s seating area is cordoned away from the action and away from the stands, so there is no real attention to seeming ladylike. Sam, as she has insisted on being called since Lena’s known her, is never content to act ladylike in any setting, and so it is a frequent haunt.

“Are we speaking of the famous Dr. Danvers?” Sam asks. “Why, Lena, I’m surprised you could have ever been convinced.”

“I didn’t exactly reveal the nature of her work before I suggested Lena attend,” Jess says, a light shrug playing across her shoulders. “She’s marvelous, isn’t she? If she weren’t a woman, I’d suggest her mechanical skills as an asset to your brother.”

“I suspect, Jess, that she makes more money in her current endeavours,” Sam says. “I’ve heard that Miss Veronica Sinclair offered her three pounds for one of her devices.”

“Her devices are indeed wonderful, but I do enjoy her hands as well,” Lena says, reaching for her tea and sipping it as primly as one could when the subject under discussion was their friend’s capabilities as a doctor treating hysterical women.

There is a brief silence that Lena realizes is wondering a moment too late.

“She uses her hands with you?” Jess asks. Lena blinks at her in confusion.

  
“Does she not with you?” Lena asks. She turns her eyes towards Sam, who looks nearly gobsmacked, a laugh bubbling across her face all over again.

“I’d think her fingers would be nearly cracked open if she used her hands with every one of her patients,” Sam says. “I’m confident plenty of women might club you with their parasols in jealousy if they knew the gift you’ve been given.”

“Her fingers,” Jess repeats. She stares into the middle distance, past the large plumage of an elder woman’s hat. “How many times have you visited?”

“I - well,” Lena begins. She is blessedly interrupted by a gasp rising up from the crowd. Many of the ladies turn their heads, the feathers adorning their hats moving in unison. Sam nearly jumps from her seat.

“Oh lord, it looks as though Mr. Edge has had his head smashed by a mallet,” Sam says. “Goodness. I suspect your mother will not allow you to marry him now, Lena.”

“Whatever shall I do?” Lena asks. Sam and Jess give a laugh as a few players stop and jump from their horses to inspect Mr. Edge’s prone body.

-

The next time Lena arrives at Kara’s practice, a woman is leaned up against the desk and is talking to Winn. She has short red hair, is wearing trousers and a waistcoat, and is checking her pocketwatch with boredom on her face. The minute she raises an ascertaining eye to Lena’s form, Lena becomes aware that this is the vaunted Alex Danvers, the sister Kara is unable to stop speaking about.

“Lena, good to see you again,” Winn says, waving from behind Alex’s form and sending a grin her way. “Kara is finishing up with a patient. Oh, and I suppose I should introduce you to - ”

“Alex Danvers,” the woman in question says, raising her hand. “Member of Scotland Yard. Who might you be?” 

She says this as though she knows exactly who Lena is, as though she has recognized her on sight. It’s possible, she supposes, especially for an esteemed detective in Scotland Yard. She accepts Alex’s hand and is somewhat shocked when Alex imitates a gentleman and raises it to her lips.

“Lena Luthor,” she states. Alex nods as she lets go of Lena’s hand.

“Ah, the woman my sister has been writing about for the past month,” Alex says. “It’s good to finally place a face with the name.”

There’s a shout from the next room that sounds something like agony, and Alex winces.

“Are they always this loud?” Alex asks. “How on earth did you convince me to come in here, again?”

“Miss Willis is a new patient. I certainly hope it does not always sounds as though she’s being mauled by wolves, and you’ve come to surprise your sister, whom you love,” Winn says, as though he’s had to remind Alex of this several times already.

“Miss Willis,” Alex says. “The blonde woman who nearly mounted Kara at the pub months ago?” 

“What woman at the pub doesn’t attempt to mount Kara?” Winn asks. He grins up at Alex when she looks down at him and glares. Lena finds herself somewhat amused by the banter, though disconcerted at its contents. It reminds her somewhat of she and Lex, on the good days, when he wasn’t consumed by his work, when he would speak to her as though she were still his sister and not a thing around his home.

The thought of various women attempting to...mount Kara, though, gives her some pause.

“Speaking of the pub,” Alex says, her gaze returning back to Lena. “I know you had some sort of appointment with Kara, but perhaps you might forgo it for a drink or four down the street. She’s been nattering on about you long enough that I think I might just have to get to know you myself.”

Lena nearly responds with a soft, but firm, _no_ when the door opens and closes swiftly, leaving a wild-eyed Kara pressed up against it.

“Winn,” Kara says. “Next time, could you warn me that my appointment is with a woman who tried to mount me at the pub?” 

“Again, what woman hasn’t attempted to mount you at the pub?” Winn returns, but the end of his sentence is swallowed by the screech that emits from Kara’s mouth when she spots her sister leaning against his desk. The hug that ensues is nearly violent, with Kara’s momentum sending them crashing into the wall and rattling the lamps there.

“How could you not tell me you were coming home?” Kara says, practically whines, into her sister’s shoulder. “I would have been saved from this - ridiculous woman, and this day. And we could have drank a whole bottle of scotch!”

“I thought I’d surprise you,” Alex says. “And now I’ve met your new friend Lena, and we’ll all be off to the pub after this to get some scotch. I certainly need some, after listening to that.”

Kara has stopped listening to her sister, her eyes now rooted to Lena, one hand reaching for her. Lena takes it, accepting the squeeze of it Kara gives her.

“Lena, I’m so glad you’re here! Oh, this is wonderful,” Kara says. “We should call on James, too, and Lucy - ”

“They’re meeting us at the pub,” Winn says, waving that away. “We’ve just got to get rid of - ”

  
“Oh, Dr. Danvers, it only makes sense that your practice is so bustling,” a voice says. Kara seems to take a deep breath, her spine tightening as she relinquishes her hold on her sister and Lena and turns to face the woman who’s just exited the exam room. Her hair is exceptionally blonde, her dark eyes trained on Kara’s face.

“Thank you, Miss Willis,” Kara says. “I hope to see you again soon.”

This seems to be about as unpolite as Kara can manage, and Miss Willis does not seem to notice this as she steps forward and brushes a hand down Kara’s forearm, exposed as it is. Lena eyes the motion, her arms crossing at nearly the same time Alex’s does.

“I certainly hope to see you as well, Doctor,” she says. “Maybe next time we could make it more interesting, as we discussed.”

And then she’s off with a press of a kiss to Kara’s cheek that seems a little close to Kara’s mouth, uncaring when her parasol smacks into Lena’s dress on the way out.

“Why do you think it is you get so much attention from women?” Alex asks, pulling out her pocket watch again and slipping it open. “Even before we came here. Remember Sally Harrington?”

“Do not besmirch Sally Harrington by comparing her to that devil woman,” Kara says, a small slouch reoccuring in her spine as she relaxes. “She brought me chocolates.”

“She snuck into our bedroom in the middle of the night during a blizzard,” Alex says dryly. “That’s how badly she wanted to kiss you. Mother had to treat her for frostbite.”

“I wish I could get someone to travel their way through a snowstorm to kiss me,” Winn grumbles. “Let’s go to the pub so I can drink my way through my sorrows.”

“Seems fair,” Alex says, grabbing for her coat and swinging it onto her shoulders. She and Winn begin a companionable walk out the door and down the steps, leaving Kara scrambling for her coat and offering an arm to Lena. The happiness plain on her face brings a smile to Lena’s and so she takes the proffered arm, allowing her body to bump just slightly up against Kara’s.

“It’s good to see you,” Kara says. “I should warn you, though, that the pub...may not be exactly what you’d imagine it to be." 

“I can’t say I’ve ever been to a pub,” Lena says, allowing Kara to let go of her arm and take her hand as they make their way down the stone steps out front of Kara’s practice. Kara laughs then, raising Lena’s hand higher as she takes the first step into the carriage waiting for them.

“Well, we’ll find out if this one is to your liking,” Kara says, ominously enough. She hoists herself in after Lena, settling close on the seat, and laughs the whole way there as Alex begins telling the story of a hapless criminal she had apprehended just this morning.

-

The pub is not so much a pub as it is an underground room slung below a barbershop. Kara offers her hand for purchase as Lena makes her way down the steps, bantering on with her sister and Winn about the Rangers results from last weekend. The leather of her glove slips underneath the softer lace of Lena’s, but her grip is firm and warm.

The man at the door greets Alex with a quick hug that lifts her off the ground, and he directs smiles at Winn and Kara. When his eyes land on Lena, he flicks them back to Kara with question in them.

  
“This is a friend, J’onn,” Kara says. Her hand is still gripping Lena’s, though it is no longer for support. Their hands are just clasped, settled between their bodies. “No troubles. I promise.”

The man, J’onn, rolls his eyes.

“The last time you promised me no troubles, your friend wrecked my snooker table,” J’onn says. Kara groans. 

“It was all in good fun,” Kara says. “Does this fair lady look as though she’d cause all that mess?”

J’onn’s eyes again alight on Lena, taking her in. After a moment, he tilts his head and pushes the door open. Lena cannot quite see into the room - there are still a few more steps down and a quick turn. But there is a sign on the wall proclaiming the establishment as the Botanical Club of Inner London.

Kara again takes the lead, her hand holding Lena’s as they take the steps further down. The door slips shut behind them, J’onn’s visage disappearing.

“You didn’t mention this was a club,” Lena says. The sign is engraved with a vine motif that she reaches out to trace. Kara’s body presses somewhat close to her in the small, enclosed space. A flare of hysterical notions grip her there.

“J’onn’s named it a club so that entry may be more cleanly denied,” Kara says with a grin. “It’s a pub alright.”

When they turn the corner and take the last few steps, Lena understands quite suddenly why Kara had mentioned the pub as unorthodox, and why there was some level of security needed in proclaiming this place a club.

In front of her, tucked into a corner, a man has his hands entrenched in another man’s short hair, their lips pressed together. Her eyes trace the room. At the bar, a woman in men’s labor clothes has her arm wrapped around another woman’s waist. There is a figure further down the bar with distinct masculine features wearing a gorgeous dress, the kind Lena might only be forced into for a trip to the Hall. Alex has weaved her way ahead of Winn towards the bar, where a woman with a newsboy cap is yelling her name. Winn has turned towards a booth to the right of the entrance, and James Olsen is standing from his seat to pick up the smaller man and pull him in for a tight hug.

“Are you alright?” Kara asks, her voice low and close to Lena’s ear. She knows she must look a child; her eyes feel impossibly wide and she works to school her face into something cooler. The root of her shock, she wants to tell Kara, is that this is something that exists. There’s not a trace of disgust in her, just wonder. A whole world she has missed. When she looks up into Kara’s face, her blue eyes look almost like sapphires in the dim light of the barroom.

The sight comforts her, and she takes a deep breath.

“Yes,” Lena says. Kara smiles then, wide and bright, and her fingers gain ahold again of Lena’s before they move after Winn.

-

Lena feels as though she might come out of her skin. Kara has set aside, for the moment, the device of this testing session - a strange vibrational toy with a soft head she had allowed Lena to touch briefly after she had removed it from her bag. Kara is talking her through a massive wave of hysterical feeling.

“How does it feel when you tease your cunt?” Kara asks. Her voice is low. It is after hours on Harley Street, a ghoulish grey sunset descending over the cold city. Despite the frigidity, Lena is unbound from her clothes. Her fingers trace over the coarse hairs of her cunt, slipping into the folds and gathering slickness.

“It feels...good,” Lena says, after a moment of haphazard deliberation. “I’m usually much more eloquent.”

“Fucking yourself isn’t the time for eloquence,” Kara says, a smile in her voice and present on her face. Lena cannot help but return the smile just before her finger glances across her swollen clit. “Tell me what you like best.”

“I like your fingers,” Lena says. In accordance with her statement, she feels one of Kara’s hands slip onto her thigh, tracing inward. They’re cold and damp, and Kara’s gaze is intent. “I was told you don’t use your fingers with others.”

Kara pauses in her approach down Lena’s body, and Lena moans in unhappiness. Kara’s fingers tap one, two, three, on the meat of Lena’s thigh.

“You are different than the others,” Kara says, her voice cracking. Lena listens to her clear it before the fingers begin to move again. Lena’s own begin to circle tighter around her clit. It feels as though her cunt is fluttering in anticipation. “This is different.”

“Different how?” Lena asks. Kara clears her throat again before she stands off her stool, settling closer. The scratchy woolen fabric of her trousers brush the outstretched skin of Lena’s thighs, bracketing her hips on both sides. It prompts a shiver through Lena that she cannot control. Her cunt clenches tightly when she flicks over her clit and Kara’s fingers glance against the curls.

“We’re friends,” Kara says. “You aren’t my patient. I want to take care of you.”

“Should I suggest I do this with my other friends?” Lena asks with a laugh. Kara snorts as well.

Her two fingers slip into Lena’s folds, tracing the entrance to her cunt. Lena groans at the feel of it, the heat of Kara’s body between her legs, her other hand landing on Lena’s thigh.

“I would suggest that they might not be so well-attuned to what you need,” Kara says. “But have at it, if you must.”

Her fingers slide all at once inside of Lena’s cunt, filling her simply. All thoughts of what it might be like to request Jess or Sam’s help in this matter fly from her mind just then, and her world narrows to the warmth of Kara’s fingers inside of her. Her hips attempt to move off the exam table, but Kara’s other hand slips to her hip and presses downward. But Kara does not reach for the device she had intended to test today.

Instead, she begins to move her fingers, in and out.

The friction this produces has Lena’s own fingers faltering in their quest for paroxysm. There is something glorious occurring in the interaction of fullness and movement; she can scarcely think straight as Kara begins to pick up her pace. The sound of it is obscene, Lena is certain, but she cannot find it in herself to care.

“How does this feel?” Kara asks. Her voice is filled with exertion, and it prompts another flutter of Lena’s cunt. She’s lost all track of her clit in the movement, and so she’s grateful when Kara’s other hand drifts inward from Lena’s hip to thumb at her clit. This time, she truly does lift her hips clean from the table.

“Good,” Lena struggles to respond. “Feels good." 

“I’ve always known you to be so eloquent,” Kara says, smiling. Lena about nearly kicks Kara free from her in the burst of annoyance that moves through her, but she would also certainly rather die than leave this exam table without completion.

“What is it that delinquent friend of yours yelled at you last night at the club? Fuck you,” Lena says. Kara laughs, and her fingers dive deep into Lena’s cunt, curling upward and pressing tightly. The mysterious feeling that assails her then is like nothing she has ever experienced. She lets out an ungainly moan.

“I believe I’m fucking you at the moment,” Kara says. Before Lena can gather together enough of her scattered mind to respond, Kara is slipping her thumb over her clit and driving into Lena with piston-like precision. It shatters Lena; her cunt tightens abruptly around Kara’s fingers, and they press deep to help Lena through the paroxysm. Her thumb rests over Lena’s clit and Lena lets out a yell that surely a passerby on the street might hear.

“Good Lord,” Lena says, after some moments. When she blinks her eyes open, Kara is looking down at her with a smile, her cheeks flushed from her own exertion. When she begins to move both her hands, Lena can’t help but yelp at the aftershock it sends through her. But Kara only truly removes one hand from the equation; with the one that had been roughing up Lena’s clit, she grabs for the device and settles it firmly against the swollen bud. “Good _Lord,_ Kara.”

“I still would like some feedback on this one,” Kara says. “I think it’s one of my better designs.”

Lena takes a heavy breath, aware that Kara will wait until she assents to turn the damned device on. Her eyes trace over Kara’s face, the half-smile quirking over her lips, the flush of her cheeks. For a moment, there is a terrific heat that overtakes her at the thought of crashing her own lips into the plush ones before her, the ones that Kara is worrying with her teeth, now beginning to look apprehensive. Her fingers begin to withdraw at the same time the device does, and Lena grabs for her wrist, hurrying to keep it in place.

“By all means,” Lena says. “Are we aiming for eight?”

“I’ll take what you can give,” Kara says, her smile blooming as though it were a morning glory rising to greet the sun. “More data points are always helpful.”

With that, she flips a dial, and Lena is well on her way.

-

“I’m not sure I feel my legs,” Lena complains. Kara lets out a bright laugh. When she hops out of the carriage, she turns back and reaches for Lena’s waist, lifting her out and onto the street in front of the Botanical Club. Lena is well aware of Kara’s strength, but the use of it always prompts her into a bit of a hysterical spin. Again, the thought of pressing forward and crushing her lips to Kara’s flies through her, especially when Kara’s smile does not wane.

“Do you need me to carry you down the stairs as well?” Kara asks. Lena rolls her eyes, her hand gripping into Kara’s as they make their way over to the entrance of the club. She’s been here numerous times by now - it’s Kara’s favored haunt, and Lena can’t help but find the safeness of the enclosure calming. She finds that when she’s in the Botanical Club, particularly in Kara’s company, she doesn’t have to worry so much about appearing like a proper heiress.

J’onn gives them a nod when they sweep up to him, Lena leaning heavily on Kara’s arm as they make their way down the stairs.

“You alright, Miss Lena?” he asks. Kara laughs uproariously as they move past him and further down into the club. Lena smacks Kara with her gloved hand on the arm even as she leans heavily on her. 

“You know, you didn’t tell me what you thought about the modifications I made to the device,” Kara says, leaning down to speak it into Lena’s ear. A shiver runs through her as they finally make it down the last infernal stair. 

“Feed me and I will consider it,” Lena says. Kara nods solemnly, ushering Lena over to their booth and waving at M’gann. The pub hasn’t quite filled up for the night, so M’gann can be heard easily when she asks if they want their usuals.

“Fish and chips, please, as well,” Kara says. “Two! No, three!”

“You sure you don’t want to just take a dip in the Thames?” M’gann asks. Kara shrugs, dropping her arm behind Lena’s shoulders in the booth and sliding closer until their bodies brush in the booth. M’gann disappears into the kitchens and Kara begins fiddling with the candle on the table in front of them.

“Your modifications were good,” Lena says. “Very, very good. You might as well slap a patent on it now." 

“I have some more ideas, though,” Kara says. M’gann runs their drinks over and accepts a handshake from Kara in gratitude. “I was thinking of adding another speed.”

“Are you trying to kill the ladies of London?” Lena asks. “Is this your way of announcing yourself as the Ripper?”

“You’re the one palling around with me,” Kara says, shrugging. “It’s my life’s work. I’d like it to be the best it could be.”

“You will hardly be defined by one singular device,” Lena says. She takes a sip of the blessed scotch M’gann’s set in front of them. Her thighs have managed to begin feeling again only to be overrun with the heat of Kara’s thigh pressing into hers. She attempts to shake her way out of it and finds Kara blinking at her with her eyes wide and smile even wider.

“Have I ever told you how kind you are?” Kara says. Lena rolls her eyes again, leaning away from Kara, who leans after her, her arms dropping to Lena’s shoulders and pulling her in tighter. Her body is warm and her hold is tight. Lena attempts to resist for a moment before she gives in.

“I’m sure I’m not,” Lena says.

“Oh, please,” Kara says. “I read all about how the Luthor family is always donating to worthy charities. I’ve seen your photo in the papers, visiting hospitals. You always let your carriage driver go elsewhere instead of waiting outside.”

“I’m not so good as you make me sound, Ms. Danvers,” Lena says. Kara rolls her eyes, shakes her head impetuously and takes a sip of her own scotch.

“My adoptive mother told me once she thought I was some sort of reader of minds, I was so empathic. I can see into your mind, Lena Luthor, and you are good,” Kara says, reaching up to tap at Lena’s temple and smiling brightly.

“ _You_ are foolish,” Lena says, after a moment, her voice halting and watery. Kara’s smile softens at its edges, and the blue of her eyes is readily apparent in the dim lighting of the club. Lena finds herself drawing closer to Kara, their bodies pressing against each other at the side. Kara seems not to mind, and why would she? They’ve been far more intimate than most other simple friends. There’s a certain joy in it; the closeness Lena enjoys with Kara. There is something that is uniquely them and theirs here in the space between them.

The bubble is so exquisite that she hardly remembers they’ve placed an order until the three plates of fish and chips arrive, and Kara makes an excited noise. Their bodies disentangle enough to calm their hungry stomachs, but only just.

-

She knows the dream is hysterical before she even sees herself in it. It is set in the cloistered velvet of her quarters which occupy the eastern half of the third floor of the Luthor home in Paddington. The four poster bed’s curtains are drawn all the way around, and when she opens her eyes, she is met with the familiar blue of Kara’s own.

The heavy weight of her hysteria presses down on her cunt at the sight of Kara’s eyes in the relative darkness. It is quiet but for Lena herself; she is whimpering, breathing hard as Kara fucks into her cunt with her blessed fingers. It is, of course, different than the experience she knows. They are in her home, not on the exam table, and Kara is atop her.

The buttoned shirt Kara usually wears beneath her waistcoat is half opened, its starch whiteness glowing in the space they’ve ensconced themselves in. Lena’s hands are wound into its collar, pressed against Kara’s collarbone and her warm skin. Kara is saying something, panting down at her.

“You’re so wet,” Kara says. “For me. All for me.”

And Lena is wet. She is wet enough that she is certain the wetness Kara is plumbing through is gathering in her sheets. But she cannot quite bring herself to care when Kara’s fingers are pushing deep into her and the palm of her hand applies a blunt pressure to her clit which has her yelping and lifting her hips from the bed. This time, Kara’s body is in the way, and the flame inside Lena grows ever hotter when Kara uses her body and its weight to press somehow deeper.

“I want,” Lena begins to say, but Kara distracts her by adjusting her hand and pressing her thumb into her clit. She flies into what must be the sun, then, her cunt pulsing around Kara’s fingers as Kara bites at the soft skin of Lena’s ear. Her paroxysm is so strong that she wakes into a real one, her eyes flinging open to find her bedroom bathed in dim light from the gas lamps on the street, and her fingers halfway to her chest. One brush against her nipple sends another throb through her.

When she closes her eyes again, breathing deeply, it is easy to picture Kara just as she was in the dream, a smile on her face as she ruined Lena’s bed sheets.

-

Kara doesn’t seem to be aware of Lena’s uncertain nature until she places her hand briefly on Lena’s bare thigh and Lena nearly vaults off the exam table completely. Kara removes her hand lightning quick, her eyes wide. There’s no hiding her reaction or avoiding it. The minute she had arrived at the clinic after hours to find Kara sans waistcoat and bow tie hanging loose around her neck, the dream she had been avoiding dropped through her body like a stone.

“Are you alright?” Kara asks. “We don’t need to work on this today if you feel uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m sorry, I - ” Lena starts, rubbing her eyes and trying to think of anything else, anything besides Kara whispering in her ear as their bodies pressed close. Hysteria was truly a monstrous thing. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kara says. She abandons her post at the end of the exam table and reaches for her heavy winter coat with woolen lapels, draping it across Lena’s body. Lena finds herself reaching for Kara’s hand before she retreats again, and so Kara stays, pressed into the side of the exam table and watching Lena with a concerned expression.

“I had a dream last night,” Lena says, after a moment. “Do you ever have...hysterical dreams?”

Kara blinks for a moment, before her fingers wind their way through Lena’s and tighten their connection.

“Yes, of course,” Kara says. “It isn’t unnatural, Lena.”

Lena nods, slowly, looking down at the frock coat on her body, tightening her fingers in its inner fabric. She isn’t sure what she wants to say. _I dreamt of you_ is what she thinks of, but when she begins to open her mouth to speak it, something prevents her. Something heavy in her chest. It’s as though she is in a dark forest attempting to find her way home, but she has forgotten the way.

Kara seems to sense something of this in her and presses closer, until her forehead knocks into Lena’s temple and her free arm slips around Lena’s shoulders.

“How about we not do this and go have a drink at the club,” Kara suggests, squeezing Lena’s hand as she says it. “I’ll tell you about the time I broke my ankle while curling.”

Lena laughs, allowing Kara’s comforting presence to calm the strangeness within her. She can still picture Kara in her mind’s eye, pressed close in the darkness. But the image is transmuting to something softer now. Kara is pressing kisses to her face, to her body, to her chest. And so she draws slowly away from Kara’s embrace. There is a deep yearning for _something_ within her that she does not quite understand. So she clears her throat and separates a little from Kara, drawing the coat around her nude body. The further she moves away, the colder it becomes. But she craves the warmth far more than she fears it, in this moment.

Kara watches her ago with concern written clearly in her eyes.

“I’m alright,” Lena says, after a deep breath. “We can continue.”

“Lena, you’re trembling,” Kara says. Her voice is soft. The room seems as though it has narrowed to just Kara, Kara in a white shirt with black buttons and sleeves rolled to her elbows. Kara whose eyes are as blue as the sky on a clear day. Kara, who she dreamt of last night, touching her, pressing hot kisses to her. There’s an undeniable curiosity that has crawled its way into Lena’s mind, now, in the face of this creature.

“I’m alright,” Lena repeats. “Just unnerved from my dream. But I’ll be fine. What torturous device do you have lined up for me this visit?”

Kara takes another moment to regard Lena, her eyes trained on Lena’s. It feels as though Kara can see right into her mind’s eye, but Lena maintains a smile, her fingers clenching in the fabric of Kara’s coat slung across her body. She begins to shift it downward, feels her nipples harden in the cool air of the exam room as they’re revealed to the bite of the air. Something about this seems to resolve Kara.

She pulls the coat off Lena when it slips down to cover only her lap and legs, her eyes flitting from Lena’s eyes to what must be the ready signs of her arousal. Kara has seen a thousand women, Lena’s sure of it, but she looks at Lena with such sincerity and seriousness that it feels as though she is something else. It helps her warm to Kara’s touch when she slowly reaches forward to press her hand into Lena’s knee.

She doesn’t shock away. A burst of heat rushes through her cunt and breasts, though, at the intent look on Kara’s face.

“I wanted to test a new technique on you, actually,” Kara says. Her hand is moving slowly up Lena’s leg, then back down again. It’s soothing. “If you’d be alright with it?”

“A new technique,” Lena repeats, watching Kara’s hand as it slips along Lena’s pale skin. She tries valiantly not to think of the intensity of her dream.

“I don’t think I’d be using it on patients,” Kara says. “I just wondered if it would work on you.”

“Alright,” Lena says. Kara smiles, a small one that grows as Lena lies back on the exam table.

“I’d advise you hold on,” Kara says. Lena does.

-

Kara’s technique involves an intense manipulation of Lena’s cunt by Kara’s fingers, pressing heavily upward inside her. The goal of the exercise is immediately apparent; the moment Kara curls her fingers up, almost hooking inside Lena, a bolt of heavy feeling flashes through her. It’s a feeling she’s felt briefly before, but the internal button seems to be at the center of the focus of the technique. And Kara abuses it.

It only takes moments before Lena feels as though she cannot breathe, her fingers tight around the edges of the table. The sounds emanating from her cunt are obscene, a persistent wet sound accompanying the movement of Kara’s fingers inside her. She hasn’t once touched her clit, but Lena is certain that her paroxysm is imminent anyways.

Kara has her other hand pressed into the crease of Lena’s thigh and hip, the thumb pressing heavily into her skin. It’s a stabilizing hold; every time Kara presses up, Lena’s hips jerk involuntarily, and Kara presses her back down with the hold. She’s trapped against the table, pierced by Kara’s fingers doing something altogether powerful to her. The tops of Kara’s clothed thighs brush against Lena’s knees. She’s nearly in her lap, but she can hardly think of that.

She arrives suddenly. The combination of the pressure of Kara’s fingers and the speed at which they’re moving overwhelms her. The blinding, heavy pleasure of it shocks her, and she feels Kara press hard into her hip to keep her down as she works her through the paroxysm. There are a few moments that she cannot place herself as being of time. When she comes back to the exam room, Kara is breathing hard, her fingers softer on Lena’s hip and still pressed into Lena.

“Are you alright?” Kara asks, softly. Lena feels her cunt throb around Kara’s hand at the sound of her voice, low and altogether distracting.

“What in God’s name,” Lena says, stretching her arms above her head to shake out the clenched feeling in her hands. “Where on earth did you learn that?”

This prompts a smile from Kara, then a deep breath.  Her fingers withdraw slowly from Lena, her eyes intent on Lena’s cunt. When they arrive on Lena’s thigh, they’re soaking wet.

This is when Lena realizes that the exam table beneath her is slick. When Kara stands, Lena sees that the front of her pants are stained darker, as though she’d spilled something on herself. But certainly Lena would have noticed something like that…

“Oh my goodness,” Lena says, sitting up and wincing when she nearly slides off the end of the table in what must be her own mess. “Kara, I’m so sorry.”

Kara, standing over by the sink and washing her hands looks over at her in confusion.

“For what?” Kara asks. “Are you alright?”

“For making such a mess,” Lena says, gesturing at her lap in a vague way and then over at Kara, who glances down at the stain on the front of her pants and shrugs. Her cheeks are red from exertion, and Lena watches as she grabs for a towel.

“Lena, it’s perfectly natural,” Kara says. “It was rather expected, in fact. That technique, when it works, tends to produce that kind of reaction. I thought it might help settle your mind. It’s a little more exhausting than a regular orgasm.”

“It’s ghastly,” Lena says. Kara reaches again for her frock coat, offering it to Lena. She takes it, wraps it around herself as she stands up. The floor is cold, but her body is so heated with embarrassment that she can’t be bothered with caring. Kara wipes down the exam table without any fanfare, unaffected.

“It’s a wonder of the female body,” Kara says, almost cheerfully. “But do you feel better?”

Lena stops to consider this, standing there in Kara’s warm coat and nothing else. Kara was right: this...orgasm, as Kara had called it, was deeper, more subterranean than the ones that had come before it. She feels as though if she were to lie down and let the warmth of the coat suffuse her, she’d be asleep in moments. It is the purest distillation of what she had originally come to Kara for.

“I do,” Lena says. Unbidden, the thought of Kara pressing closer and kissing her floats across her mind as though it were a sailless boat. The feeling of it rushes through her, and she wraps Kara’s coat tighter around her. “Thank you, Kara.”

“Of course,” Kara says. “I was going to offer to take you to dinner, but I fear I might have to change pants before I’m seen in public.”

“I’ll happily purchase you some new ones,” Lena starts, but Kara waves her off.

“It’s not a bother, Lena,” Kara says. She smiles. “Would you mind terribly if we stopped at my flat before we went over to the pub?”

-

“Let me take your coat,” Kara says, and Lena dutifully pulls her outer coat from her body and hands it over. Kara is gentle with its fine furs, settling it on the coat rack just inside her door. Lena finds herself looking over the quarters, looking for traces of Kara. They are there in the decorative choices, in the paintings that Kara has confessed to enjoying. “And welcome! May I get you a drink?”

“What do you have?” Lena asks, following Kara further in. There are paintings of vivid orange landscapes that look nothing like England, a table in the far corner taken up with metallic pieces and sketches of what look to be Kara’s designs. The warmth of the apartment, the familiarity of Kara fill Lena up with warmth. She finds herself leaning up against the wall while Kara bounces through.

“Just about anything you’d like,” Kara says, voice muffled. She’s disappeared further down the hallway into a room. She pops her out of the doorway and regards Lena, her waistcoat unbuttoned and shirt untucked. Lena has a vision of reaching out and feeling the skin that hides beneath it. “Are you alright? Do you need to lie down?" 

“I do feel rather tired,” Lena says, after a moment. Kara reaches out for her hand and Lena takes it, allowing herself to be drawn into a bedroom that must be Kara’s. The bed there is large, slightly messed. The room is decidedly modern, an easel set up in the corner next to a window that looks out over a back alley.

  
“Take a rest,” Kara says, pressing her hands into Lena’s back. “We can set out in an hour or so.”

Lena looks down, regarding for a moment her dress, mountainous as it is. Kara gives a short laugh, tugging at the small coat covering her undershirt.

“Feel free to get comfortable,” Kara says. “Honestly, Lena, you look exhausted. I’ll wake you in a bit.”

“Alright,” Lena says, after a moment of deliberation. “Thank you, Kara.”

“You say thank you too much,” Kara says, and there she presses a kiss to Lena’s temple that shocks through her, as though she’s suddenly cut herself. “I’ll be in the sitting room if you need me, alright?”

“Alright,” Lena repeats, again, softly. Her head still reverberates with the kiss. Kara disappears with a pair of pants in hand and the door closes softly behind her. Lena is left alone in a room that burns of Kara. Marks of her are everywhere: on the bureau, there’s a model of the device that Kara seems most to favor now. There are books stacked on the nightstand. The very candles smell of Kara as she drifts closer to them. When she disrobes and slips into the bed, it’s like being enveloped in her.

She falls asleep nearly as soon as she closes her eyes.

\--

Kara is beneath her, this time, her eyes dark and wide. Her fingers trace up and down Lena’s body, upright as she is.

“You’re beautiful, Lena,” Kara whispers. Her fingers press inward, the blunt shape of her nails scratching down Lena’s sides. The movement leaves goosebumps in her wake. Lena’s nipples harden then, and Kara’s finger attaches to them nearly as soon as they do. They are not gentle. Kara twists and pinches with ruthlessness, her hands working Lena into a lather that she is certain she might never be able to come down from. “God, you are gorgeous.”

The breathlessness of Kara’s words presses into Lena’s head as well as her hands. The wet feeling of her cunt presses downward into Kara’s lap, and the feeling of it provokes a groan that has Kara smiling, shifting until she’s more upright, until the distance between their faces is that of a few inches.

“I gather you’d like my fingers in your cunt,” Kara says, and again the very sound of the words feels like a brand on Lena. It twists in her mind as though it were leveraging something loose, as though they were unchaining Lena. Lena nods over and over, unable to work though words. Kara smiles.

“Lena,” she says, whispery soft. “Lena. Lena.”

Lena groans as Kara’s hand reaches up to press at her shoulder, gently, away from her nipples.

“Lena, wake up.”

This is when Lena does wake, her situation wildly different than what had been occurring in her dream. Kara is hovering just above her, looking wide eyed. The room is dark but for a lone candle on the nightstand. When Lena manages to focus, she’s come over with such a violent wave of hysterics that breathing becomes nearly impossible. Kara has abandoned her waistcoat and unbuttoned some of her shirt. The lean of her is so entrancing that Lena lets out another small sound, and her hand catches Kara’s before she can think better of it.

“I need your help,” Lena says. She tugs at Kara’s hand, and watches as one of Kara’s knees rests on the edge of the bed. She’s changed her pants, now dry and untouched by Lena.

“Alright,” Kara says. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve had another dream, and I need - ”

“You need an orgasm,” Kara says. Her eyes trace down Lena’s body then, her hand clearly uncertain in Lena’s. “Lena…”

“Please,” Lena says. Kara’s eyes snap back to hers. “Please, Kara.”

Kara bends to her then, slowly, slipping into the bed and settling next to Lena, her hand still caught up in Lena’s. Her eyes are hot on Lena’s skin, pressing in and whispering at her. Lena wants, and she’s ashamed. 

“What do you need?” Kara asks. “How can I help?”

“Touch me,” Lena says. Kara’s hands reach for the buttons on Lena’s combinations, steady and sturdy and strong where Lena feels like she’s shaking.

“What happened in your dream?” Kara asks, her fingers working to expose Lena’s skin to the too-warm air of the bedroom, to Kara’s eyes. Lena kicks her foot forward until it slips between Kara’s calves, desperate to be close. Kara is talking lowly, her eyes half-hidden by the relative darkness of the room.

“I was - it doesn’t matter,” Lena says. “God, please, Kara.”

“I usually dream of ravishing others,” Kara says. She seems almost as though she’s speaking while in a trance, like one of those planted by mediums at ridiculous carnival shows. Her fingers press back the fabric of the combinations until they slide down Lena’s arms. When her fingers alight on Lena’s nipples and the words settle into Lena’s mind, it feels as though Lena has dug her hand into a snowbank suddenly. Her back bows so far that her hips hit Kara’s.

There is a breath of space and time where neither of them move. For a moment, Lena is certain that this is the end of her friendship with Kara Danvers, as strange and wonderful and fleeting as it was. That Lena has finally asked too much of her.

The moment passes as Kara pushes Lena over, her back settling on the bed, and pulls at the pants of the combinations until they are off and away.

“Tell me about your dream,” Kara says, insistently. Her hands press into Lena’s hipbones as she settles half above Lena.

“It was - I was on top and - ” Lena shudders when Kara’s lone finger traces the lips of her cunt. Kara lets out a noise that distracts her thoroughly from speaking. There’s no judgment. Only appraisal.

“You’re soaked,” Kara says, and something in the statement seems to draw her back to herself. She withdraws her hand and looks down at Lena’s body, open and waiting, and blinks. “Lena, perhaps - ”

“Kara, I need you to fuck me,” Lena says.

This seems to settle something in Kara that had not been before. She leans down, her finger returning with reinforcements, slipping inside her lips and running through the wetness there. It is slick enough that the sound distracts Lena. But it ends nearly as soon as it had begun: Kara withdraws her hand and reaches up with it to wrap her slick fingers around Lena’s nipple. The weight of Kara’s abdomen presses into Lena’s cunt, surely soaking through Kara’s white shirt, and she jolts at the pressure.

“Fuck,” Kara says, quietly. “Lena. Can I - ”

“Anything,” Lena says, preempting whatever well-earned doctorly advice Kara’s about to suggest. Nothing could have prepared her, in the end, for Kara to circle her nipple a few more times before she leans down further and replaces her clever fingers with her mouth.

The wet seal of it nearly ends Lena’s consciousness. She bucks again, pressing tighter into Kara’s stomach. Kara lathes the raised nipple with her tongue, a new slickness settling overtop the one leftover by her cunt. The shocks of feeling are different and just as intense as those provoked by her fingers. There is one moment where Kara’s cheeks hollow and she sucks, and it is as though Lena’s vision goes white.

There is no respite now, and Lena is beyond caring. Kara works her breasts and her fingers slip back down to Lena’s cunt. She doesn’t bother asking after what kind of attention Lena would enjoy; she circles her entrance a few times and slips in with two fingers, and she begins the steady work of encouraging Lena to paroxysm. It’s messy, shocking, and quick: she had been nearly on the edge when she had been woken from her dream and Kara knows Lena’s body surely as well as she knows her own. There’s the rapid push and pull of her fingers, dragging against the sensitive spot inside Lena, the fullness brought on by two fingers. There’s Kara’s teeth edging into the soft, sensitive skin of Lena’s nipples.

She comes as sudden and powerful as a gunshot, her hips canting downward to keep Kara inside her. The rapturous feeling of her cunt pulsing around the fingers inside her is so good that she feels she could cry. Kara releases her nipple and presses her forehead into the valley between Lena’s breasts, breath being forced in and out of her mouth.

“Is that good?” Kara asks. Her voice sounds like the crack of a cricket bat. It’s impossible to ignore the heavy contraction around Kara’s fingers. The answering twitch of them makes Lena squirm. “Do you need more?”

There is no language for what Lena needs. She needs something interminable and immeasurable, something that sits on the edge of her mind and withdraws from clarity or definition. She needs the hot feeling of Kara’s skin on her.

“You need more,” Kara says. Lena thinks to apologize, for wanting more, but the look on Kara’s face when she lifts her head is not disdainful or unkind. Her hand withdraws as her body does, and Lena glimpses the hard lines of her abdomen in the clear lines of her shirt made by Lena’s cunt. She presses her wet fingers into the shirt absentmindedly as she climbs back out of bed.

The warmth suffusing Lena disappears nearly as soon as Kara goes, and she lets out a questioning sound. Kara waves her off, heading over to her bureau.

“You know, I’ve never met a woman who I had such trouble pleasing,” Kara says, a smile on her voice. It’s strange; Lena’s mind interprets it as a criticism, but her clit aches to be touched. Kara slips back into bed just as suddenly as she had left it, with her device in hand and a long, slim case in the other. She tosses the heavy down blanket to the side, unearthing Lena’s legs from the blankets.

“I think it’s clear that you please me,” Lena says. Her voice croaks, but she muddles along. Kara laughs, flicking the switch of the device back and forth as she presses Lena’s legs wide and settles between them. She’s still wearing her woolen pants; her shirt is still stained through with slick. Her hair is coming loose from a bun.

“I see nearly twenty women in a day, and you are the only one who vexes me this way,” Kara says. She sounds nearly absentminded, as though she’s been pushed to the edge and is inhabiting it. It reminds Lena of Lex when he gets into one of his moods, in a way. Her hand reaches out and thumbs at Lena’s clit, and Lena’s hips jump. “You know that any man would want you in their bed like this, Lena. There’s not a lady in London I have seen who is half as beautiful as you. 

“Are you alright?” Lena asks. Kara lets out a short laugh, sounding harried and wild, before she’s reaching for the case she had brought over. She pulls from it a rubber length. Lena immediately divines its purpose, and curse her hysterical womb, she _wants_ it.

“I’m alright,” Kara says. “I’m alright.”

“Kara - ”

Kara’s gaze has focused intently on Lena’s cunt, where her thumb has been tracing at her clit, soaking up the wetness there. Her fingers play with the folds there as if it were intricate and mysterious, her eyes entranced by the sight of it.

“What do you think of, when you do this to yourself?” Kara asks. Lena blinks her eyes closed and open again, shaking her head, her hips shaking on Kara’s fingers. “Tell me more about your dream.”

“I think of - ” she starts, as Kara twists a finger inside of her. Her eyes close again as Kara drags its tip across the spot inside her.

“Keep talking,” Kara says. “Tell me, Lena. I think of things like this. I think of fucking someone until they can’t think of anything but me. Do you dream of a man fucking you like that?”

“No,” Lena manages. This is when the head of the rubber piece lands on her clit, exposed to the open air by Kara’s fingers. Her hips lift toward it, and she groans. “Kara, please - ”

“I don’t think a man could fuck you the way I know how to,” Kara says, her voice a whisper in the heavy air between them. Her fingers withdraw from Lena’s cunt as the firm weight of the rubber presses at her opening. It’s larger than Kara’s two fingers, a fullness that Lena so desperately wants that she feels as though she could sob. Her legs draw wide around Kara, and Kara crawls upwards, her hand tracking into Lena’s hair, her face pressing into Lena’s temple. “Do you want this?”

She doesn’t have words. So she nods vigorously, and she feels more than hears Kara take a deep, heavy breath against her ear, her fingers tightening in the strands of Lena’s hair. The pain of it is pleasurable in the same way the accommodating stretch of her cunt makes her gasp in pleasure as it slips in. Kara presses it in slowly, her hand pressed down by the weight of her own hips, and Lena finds her hands gripping at the fabric of Kara’s shirt simply for something to hold onto.

“Christ,” Lena whispers, as Kara begins a minuscule movement of drawing back and forth, before a moan tumbles out of her lips. It feels as though Lena is the violin and the length between her legs is the bow; Kara is a virtuoso intent on producing sound unheard before on this Earth.

Kara leaves the length in for a moment and keeps it there with her body, scrabbling for the device and pressing it between them. Lena has only a moment of preparation before the switch is flipped and her world shocks into violent technicolor. The weight of Kara pressing the device downward, her hand in Lena’s hair, the rubber inside her, and Lena is lost in a swirl of sensation so thick she isn’t sure she could ever escape it.

Kara’s breath carries a whine with it for the first time as she presses heavily into Lena, her body freezing up at the hum of the device between them. She sees a moment similar to the one that had begun this whole encounter, of her hips moving without her permission and rushing into Kara’s. The moment passes in much the same way. Lena crushes her fingers into Kara’s finely sculpted back, wrought now with a damp sweat, and breathes.

“It’s alright,” Lena says. The sound that lets out of Kara in response is as bright and shocking as the first time Lena had seen an incandescent light bulb lit up under the power of electricity. It feels as though a hereby unknown portion of her pleasure is opened to her at the moan that rumbles into her ear. Kara’s hips press downward in a rhythmic motion that follows along with the press of the rubber inside Lena’s cunt.

The magic they produce could be bottled and sold by snake oil salesmen the whole of London over. The bolts of feeling in Lena are as dangerous as Shakespeare’s tempest, and Kara is a sturdy sea captain who knows her way.

“Kara,” Lena says, clutching desperately now at the woman’s shirt, feeling Kara’s hand tighten in her hair and her breath come quicker. She has little to say that Kara doesn’t know. The moment Lena’s back bows upward, her skin rushing with goosebumps, Kara thrusts only a few more times before her own body locks up and she moans in such a way that she has reached her release as well. It feels like a never ending chain between them; hearing Kara propels Lena headlong into another flurry of pulses, and Kara’s hips jolt again downward.

“Fuck,” Kara says, after a heavy moment of this push and pull. Her hand releases the rubber and grabs the device by its handle. She flips the switch and flings it off the bed - it hits the hardwood floor of the bedroom with a rattling sound that cannot bode well for its viability. Lena whines as Kara slowly withdraws the length, setting it on the bed and settling back on her heels. She looks exhausted, young, and thoroughly debauched. Her shirt is covered in sweat, her pants stained again with wet.

“Kara,” Lena asks, reaching upwards for Kara. Kara slips off the bed, away, her fingers shaking as they work at the buttons of her shirt. “Kara - ”

“I’m going to go tell your carriage driver you’re indisposed for the night and to advise your brother and mother,” Kara says, her voice distant even as she stands not two meters away. “Rest.”

She’s gone before Lena can protest.

-

When she wakes, the apartment is silent. There’s a robe draped over the end of the bed, and the drawers to Kara’s bureau are half-open. There is a grey light drifting in from the window next to the easel. There’s a half done sketch on the canvas there, clearly abandoned for the moment.

Kara is gone. There’s a scrawled note declaring that she’s left for a busy day at the office left out on the sitting room table, and to let herself out whenever she feels up to it. By the workbench, the device from last night has been cracked open. The candle on the table there has melted down to a nub, where before it had been fresh. The sitting room sofa is untouched, and it’s clear that Kara did not even attempt to sleep.

There’s also a piece of paper shifted to the corner of the desk, a granted patent to a Dr. Kara Danvers for a battery operated personal massager. The blueprints attached are of the device Kara has been favoring for weeks with Lena, the one she had used on her last night.

Lena sets out on her way, unclear as to why she feels as though the Earth has shifted beneath her feet.

-

“You look as though you’ve been dragged through the streets by a horse,” Sam says, sipping her tea and reaching for a cucumber sandwich. Behind her, there is a round of shouting as Jack Spheer wallops a ball toward the midwicket.

“You are by far one of my dearest friends,” Lena murmurs. She has barely come unattached from her tea, as exhausted as she is. She had arrived at her home to her brother worriedly looking her over, her mother asking her to go in her stead to a cricket match, perhaps to spend some time with that “Indian boy who is so infatuated with you.”

“Would you rather I worship at your feet?” Sam asks. “Is the good doctor not seeing you so often?”

“I saw her last night,” Lena says. Her eyes are trained on the stack of scones in front of her, and so she misses the widening of Sam’s eyes and the curious tilt of her head.

“Lena, may I ask you something?” Sam asks. Lena nods, looking outward again as a round of cheers bursts up from the men’s cheering section. “Jack Spheer. He is a gentleman and handsome, is he not? And charming.”

“I suppose,” Lena says. Her eyes trace over Jack’s form, distant. He’s wearing breeches and a sweater, his beard well-kept about his face. But there is no spark of anything in her at the sight. It is something like looking at a beautiful painting. “Why do you ask?”

Sam’s response is interrupted by another burst of cheers that ends with a shocked gasp as Morgan Edge takes a ball to the face and hits the pitch nearly as soon as it smashes into his forehead.

“I am such a fan of cricket,” Sam says, craning her neck to watch as the nearby men rush to his side. There seems to be an awful lot of blood. While much of the crowd is distracted, Lena finds her mind drifting back to Kara, of listening to her talk over Rangers matches with her sister, her shoulders underneath Kara’s arm.

-

By the time she’s free from the cricket match and done with a dinner with her mother, the sun is setting. Kara’s office’s lights are off, and J’onn admits he hasn’t seen Kara all day when she stops at the pub. So she directs her driver to Kara’s apartment. There is a burning need within her to fix whatever had broken last night, an anxiety in the pit of her stomach that cannot be unpuzzled without seeing Kara, without hearing her laugh.

When she knocks on the door to Kara’s apartment, there is a moment of silence so deep that it is rather like drowning. But eventually, there is a clatter of noise and the door swings open to a red-cheeked Kara Danvers, waistcoat undone and top button popped open.

“Lena,” Kara says. Her tongue traces the words in an ungainly way that makes it clear that the glass of scotch in Kara’s hand is not her first. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I should be,” Lena says. She presses outward with her hands in an attempt to grab ahold of Kara by the waistcoat, but the woman backs away. She doesn’t seem to notice that it leaves a clear path in for Lena. Once she closes the door, she turns back to find Kara halfway into the sitting room, heading for the sofa. “Kara, I wanted to apologize for last night.”

“How about we speak none of last night,” Kara says. In front of her are mechanical bits and pieces, spread out over the table. Lena follows after her, sitting in the armchair.

“I’ve upset you,” Lena says. Kara scoffs. Her hair is falling from its bun, and it reminds Lena of the visage of her from last night. The burst of feeling in her cunt is deeply unneeded, and she adjusts herself in her seat.

“You haven’t upset me,” Kara says. “You should go. I’m no company for you.”

“I want to be here with you,” Lena says. Kara’s bright blue eyes pick up from the array of metals in front of her and latch onto Lena’s. Lena can see the whites of her knuckles as they press around the glass in her hand. Lena has an urge to press her fingers atop Kara’s, to soothe her grip, to press those hands onto her body. “Let me help you.”

“I’m fine,” Kara says. “Please, Lena, just...go.”

“I’m sorry for last night,” Lena says, endeavouring to press her apology since Kara hasn’t yet thrown her from her home.

“You did nothing wrong, Lena,” Kara says, rubbing at her forehead and drinking more of her scotch. It looks as if there are tears in her eyes, torture on her face, and Lena can’t help but feel awfulness.

“I did,” Lena insists, holding back her own tears. “You’re my friend, Kara, my best friend, but I…”

“You want me to fuck you,” Kara says. She says it as though the very thought of it breaks her, and Lena can’t help but draw back from the abject sadness of it. Even if there is a truth in it. “But Lena, I can’t. You can take one of the devices if you need it, I don’t care.”

The abrupt ending of their arrangement propels and the tortured way Kara severs it builds a hot feeling in her eyes and chest that she cannot begin to work her way through. The awful feeling of something existing just beyond her range of understanding is again in her mind.

“I’m sorry,” Lena says. Kara slips sideways on the couch, her eyes closing and her fingers pressing against the bridge of her nose.

“Lena, it’s alright,” Kara says, and her fingers drift below her glasses to rub against her eyes. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“My disease has done this to us,” Lena says. The heavy feeling in her stomach is an anchor pulling her to the floor. But even below that, there is truth to Kara. There is absolution in her, too. Lena aches to reach out and feel the heat of Kara’s cheeks and her body, to press away the lines of stress on her face. She wants to step over to the couch and lay her body next to Kara’s, like last night.

“You do not have a disease, Lena,” Kara murmurs. “I have told you a thousand times.”

“Then what - ”

Kara interrupts her suddenly, her voice harsh and hot and impassioned, and Lena’s cunt wets at the tone.

“It is not a disease to want,” Kara says. “I am no doctor. What I do is not medicine. It is only mistaken as such because women do not understand themselves. So I attempt to give them a way to understand.”

Her frustration is evident, her cheeks a bright red with the scotch she’s been drinking. Her lean body is sprawled out on the couch, her shirt having come untucked from her trousers on one side. A sliver of skin peaks through, and Lena desperately wants to feel it. Wants to take the edge of her pinky and run her finger along that small piece of skin and see what reaction it might gather from Kara Danvers.

“It is not a disease to want,” Lena repeats. Something in the phrase has unlocked a gate in her mind, has ushered her into a garden. She wants to see what Kara Danvers might do if Lena touched her the way that Kara’s touched Lena. She wants to see her cunt; wants to see her face when she comes to orgasm.

“Of course it isn’t,” Kara mutters, twisting further on the couch until the sliver of skin visible becomes something closer to a river cutting across her abdomen. As she works herself into her frustration, the slur of her tongue begins to drift away. “Men are allowed the completion they desire without question and their wives are neglected.”

“What of inverts then?” Lena asks. “Is that a natural situation? Or is it a natural reaction to men not being able to give their wives what they need?”

This question seems to throw Kara for a moment, as her eyes lock on Lena’s and remain steadily on hers for an interminable time. But she sits up, adjusting the bun in her hair and tugging at the white shirt beneath her open waistcoat until the river is swallowed up.

“Most of the women I’ve met who prefer the company of other women give no thought to men at all,” Kara says. She sounds angry now, two red patches of skin high on her cheeks. The alcohol has apparently motivated the easy flow of color along Kara’s body. Lena wants to know where else it has migrated to. “They want other women. When they touch themselves they think of women.”

Lena is confronted then with her own fantasies, all of them revolving around the woman in front of her. When she had lain in bed last night alongside Kara and worked herself to orgasm on the other woman’s fingers, Kara’s mouth on her nipples, she had only thought of Kara. When she replaces the image of Kara in her mind with Jack, or Edge, or the most handsome man she could think of - a cold sensation washes down her back, and the flaring heat dies away as suddenly as it had arrived.

How had she not thought of this before?

“It isn’t wrong,” Kara continues. “The people who say that are foolish and controlling and they do not understand.”

“Do you?”

Kara blinks for a moment, her mouth hanging open and her eyes trained on Lena. The glass of scotch is still dangling from her hand.

“Do I - what? Do I understand?”

“Do you prefer the company of other women?” Lena asks. Kara blinks more, her eyes on Lena’s for a moment longer before she reaches to set her glass of scotch down and stands. Lena thinks for a thrilling second that she’s moving closer to Lena, but instead she takes a step away, her hands clearly unsteady as she reaches for the shirt hanging loose and begins tucking it back into her pants.

“What are you doing?” Lena asks. Kara’s fingers move with increasing dexterity, smoothing over lines in her shirt and slipping beneath the waistband of her trousers and back out with aplomb. Her hands arrive at the buttons of her waistcoat when she turns to glance at Lena.

“It’s late,” Kara says. “I will see you home. I’m sure your mother might become worried if you stay under my supposed attention for another night more.”

“My mother could give two figs,” Lena says, standing now and moving closer to Kara. Kara is still methodically making her way through the buttons of her waistcoat. “Kara.”

“Lena,” Kara returns, her voice suddenly exhausted. The flush on her cheeks has worsened in these moments, and Lena reaches out to touch one patch of red skin, and she feels a near volcanic heat begin inside her at the mere touch. Kara freezes under the touch, her hands wrapped in the buttons of her coat. “Lena.”

The repetition of her name is soft, uncertain, questioning. Kara looks at her and sees now what she has missed: something she wants, something she could have. Would have, if Kara were to let it happen.

“I want you,” Lena says. She revels in that feeling, of wanting something. She revels in the heat of Kara’s skin under her fingertips, the shock on her face. Kara turns minutely toward her, then, shifting only slightly closer.

They are kissing before Kara can level a response. It is a near perfect communication. The paint of Lena’s lips slows the slide of their touch to something like a crawl, a press. It’s insistent, electric, near extranormal. Lena had thought that she had experienced the depths of hysteria, had experienced arousal unmatched, but this kiss, as Kara had been since the moment of their meeting, was life-changing. The garden she had entered burst into color, the birds chirped, and Kara let out a noise that Lena felt in her cunt, in the tightening of her nipples. Their bodies moved closer until they were pressed tightly to one another, and Kara’s hands gripped at the sides of Lena’s dress with such strength that she could feel them through the layers of clothing.

“Take me to bed,” Lena whispers into the space between them, when Kara draws away to press kisses to Lena’s face, her cheeks and chin and eyebrows. Kara gives no indication but for the grip of her hands tightening that she’s heard. But when Lena’s lips are recaptured with Kara’s again, she feels her body moving backwards, towards Kara’s bedroom.

-

“Are you sure about this?” Kara asks, her lips hindering Lena’s progress of removing her corset cover. They are adhered to Lena’s neck, drifting below her jaw. The kisses she’s pressing are interspersed with nips of her teeth that feel like light caresses to her clit.

“How is this different than anything we’ve done before?” Lena asks, her breath hitching halfway through when Kara applies suction to a spot just under her ear.

“This is impossibly different,” Kara murmurs. Her lips press against the heavy pulse in Lena’s neck as she speaks, and the heat of it warps Lena’s concentration entirely. It is different. Lena’s fingers are wound up in the collar of Kara’s shirt, and she finds she can twist her fingers beneath it, across the skin there. The movement draws a heavy breath from Kara.

“I have thought a thousand times of touching you,” Lena says. “I cannot believe it took me so long to realize I could.”

Kara’s fingers pluck at the buttons of Lena’s corset cover until it is free. The work of removing her clothes is so secondhand to them that Lena can focus on other things: the way Kara’s lips nip at the muscle of her shoulder, the heat of her skin as Lena attempts to pull her shirt away from her. The moment Lena is free of her combinations, Kara is urging her backwards, onto the bed, their lips again sinking into each other.

“Lie back,” Kara murmurs. Her fingers circle Lena’s nipples as she says so, and Lena can’t help but moan and raise her hips, hoping for some pressure against them. But Kara draws backwards, reaching for the belt buckle about her hips. “You are gorgeous. I have always thought so.”

Her words and tone send shivers through Lena, her hand reaching down to her cunt and slipping through the mess of wetness there. Kara’s eyes move with her tracing, her fingers pulling the belt free from the loops about her trousers. The snapping sound the leather gives when it slides free sends a throb through her.

“You are all I have thought about for months,” Lena whispers. Kara fumbles the execution of pulling down her pants as she hears it, and Lena desperately wants to upset the careful calm Kara has always displayed. Wants to see again the desperate woman on top of her last night. “I had no idea how much I wanted you.”

“You have me,” Kara responds, tripping free from her trousers and sliding onto the bed. She crawls up until she is pressing her weight onto Lena, their lips finding each other’s again. The gentleness of the first and the exploration of the subsequent kisses has given way to fervid passion. Kara kisses hard, and when she bites at Lena’s lower lip, Lena’s hips bolt upward. The fabric of Kara’s shirt and the hardness of her hips meets her and she moans again.

She does not notice at first the way Kara braces her body upward. Lena’s hands are driven to distraction by the feeling of Kara’s skin underneath her shirt, a delicate binding about her chest obstructing her from her nipples. It’s a frustration that only makes her hotter. It dilutes her attention so well that when Kara’s fingers swipe through her folds, she lets out a yell.

“I want to taste you,” Kara says. Her lips are still against Lena’s, breath shared between them as Kara circles around Lena’s cunt. “Let me, please.”

Lena is not so certain she knows what Kara means until she’s given her assent and Kara’s body drifts lower down Lena’s. Errant kisses are pressed to her body on the way, along with a lengthy minute of attention paid to her nipples, and then Kara is slipping beneath Lena’s legs, her hands grasping around her thighs, and the picture comes to clarity just before Kara’s hot breath hits her wet cunt.

“Christ,” Lena says, her hips jumping. Kara presses her back down, her nose brushing the thatch of curls as she looks up at Lena. Her eyes are dark, her hands strong, and Lena is lost to it. “Please, Kara.”

Kara has no response but to press forward and slip her tongue between Lena’s folds.

The feeling is something else. She can give no thought to the strangeness of it when it feels so extraordinarily good. The addition of Kara’s wet tongue and warm mouth is some sort of alchemy that Lena is not certain she could ever understand; when Kara’s lips seal around her clit, she is certain that her death is upon her. The sound of it is obscene, the visual of it - Kara’s eyes trained on her across the length of her body, hungry, makes Lena feel like a wanton thing. She is certain in this moment that her whole life will never be the same.

Kara endeavours, as always, to change her further.

Her clever fingers slip up under her chin and slip inside Lena. The fullness she feels compared against the dextrous muscle of Kara’s tongue at her clit is a feeling previously unknown and wildly different than she could have imagined. She can feel orgasm racing up her body only just before it occurs; she lets out a groan that Kara echoes against her clit. The vibration is one of Kara’s dastardly devices in miniature, and her pulsing is only that much harder around Kara’s fingers.

“You always come so well for me,” Kara murmurs, her fingers still inside Lena, her temple resting on Lena’s thigh. When she looks up again at Lena, her chin and cheeks are messy with slick. But an effervescent smile rests there, too, one of delight and looseness that Lena can feel in the very roots of her. Kara keeps her fingers entrenched in Lena, but travels back up, and Lena pulls her into a kiss filled with the peculiar taste of her own wetness. Something about tasting it off of Kara’s lips sends a bolt through her, and Kara lets out a low rumbling laugh at the pulse of her cunt.

Her fingers begin fucking Lena’s cunt again. It feels stretched from the rubber of last night, but the feeling of pressure against it feels as good as pressing against a bruise. She feels alive, wrapped in Kara’s sheets, kissing Kara. Kara takes her to another orgasm with a continuous thrust that reaches deep and hard into Lena, wet kisses passing between them as easy as air.

When she’s come down, Kara is still there, nosing at her jaw and breathing hard, fingers gripped into the sheets next to Lena. There is a wetness against Lena’s thigh at the join of Kara’s underthings that she has been wanting after, and now she shall have it.

-

Fucking herself had been an adventure. Kara fucking her was something from another plane, unexplainable and eternal. But the vision that lies before her after Kara has been coaxed from her shirt and underthings is like staring into the face of God himself. Her cunt is a dusky pink, shining in the low light of the bedroom. Her lips are different than Lena’s, thicker and more prominent. Kara had told her once that the clit would become more obvious the more aroused she was; if this were fact, Kara must be completely overtaken with it. When Lena reaches out to touch it, Kara shifts her hips and whines.

“I’m tight,” Kara says. “Just...only one finger. Slow.”

It might have seemed a denial of Lena’s urges, but she is endeared all the more instead. Her fingers slip through Kara’s cunt then, gathering wetness. She understands now why men talk so endlessly of the beauty of a woman’s sex. Kara’s hips are undulating slowly under her ministrations, her fingers caught in one of the pillows of the bed as she lies beneath Lena’s devouring eyes.

She slides one lone finger down to rest against the entrance to Kara’s cunt, watching as Kara takes in a heavy breath and exhales it. When she slowly presses in, obeying Kara’s command, she feels an answering flood of wetness in her cunt at Kara’s gasp. The pressure around her finger is warm, wet, and devastating. When she hooks her finger in an attempt to mimic Kara’s ministrations, she finds herself against a thick pad of ridges that have Kara moaning when she presses.

“Deeper,” Kara murmurs. So Lena abandons the magical button to press in slow, until the knuckles of her fist are pressing into the meat of Kara’s cunt. “Good lord.”

Kara is shaking on the one finger buried inside of her. Her hands have abandoned the pillows. One reaches for her nipples, the other reaching for her cunt. Her finger slips over her clit, so visible and beautiful, and Lena feels the precipitous tightening of her cunt around her finger. She feels entranced.

“Fuck in and out, but...not too much,” Kara says. Lena does what Kara asks, eyes trained on the way Kara’s eyes slide shut and the way she twists her nipples almost viciously. Her ribs expand in and out quickly, breath coming shorter as she comes close. “I’m going to - ”

Kara finds her release as though she’s a machine which has been shut down suddenly. Her body locks, her fingers freezing in their pursuit, and her cunt tightens around Lena’s finger so closely that she cannot even move it minutely. Lena has seen a thousand beautiful things in her life of all manners, and yet, there is nothing like this. She is certain there will never be anything like this, either.

Once Kara relaxes, Lena removes her finger ever so slowly, and brings it to her tongue to taste. Kara’s eyes are hooded, and she blinks owlishly when Lena finds herself sucking the wetness off. It is unfamiliar, heavy and sweet and bitter all at the same time. If she goes a day without tasting it for the rest of her life, she fears she might die.

“Come here,” Kara murmurs. Her body is loose now, a small smile on her face. She reaches for Lena, and Lena comes willingly. The full length of their heated, naked bodies pressing against each other is a sensation Lena had not known she craved. But there is so much to learn about what it is she wants, now. The kiss they share now is simple and good and a connection that she did not know she could ever have. There is great joy in her heart, and a calmness she had been chasing when she stepped into Kara’s office. Perhaps even before that moment.

She sinks into Kara.

-

When Lena wakes, Kara is sprawled out, with Lena tucked closely into her side. It is sometime in the night, the gas lamps flickering out the window. Kara stirs when Lena picks her head up, her eyes blinking open in the darkness.

“Are you alright?” Kara murmurs, her voice low and soft with laced with sleep. Her hand is wrapped around Lena’s waist, thumbing at her hip. It’s warm despite the chill outside. Lena takes the time to think over her body; there is a sense of use along her muscles, but a lightness to her that makes her nearly buoyant. She pulls herself closer to Kara, pressing her smile into Kara’s neck when she hums.

“I’m alright,” Lena says. “You?” 

Kara hums again, shifting slightly to pull the heavy fur blanket further up over them. Her head turns until she’s pressing a kiss to Lena’s forehead.

“I’m happy,” Kara says. It is as though she is still in a dream, the wondering quality of her voice. “I should have kissed you the moment I thought of it.”

“How long?” Lena asks. She lets her fingers run across the underside of Kara’s chest, lazily tracing out patterns. Kara smiles softly, her eyes slipping shut again.

“A while,” Kara says. “I tried to ignore it.”

“Did you succeed?” Lena asks, poking at the tight skin of Kara’s stomach. Kara laughs, quietly, her hand tightening about Lena’s waist and again kissing her forehead.

“All things considered, I thought I was doing rather well until last night,” Kara says. “You are something else, Lena Luthor.”

“You are as well, Kara Danvers,” Lena whispers, kissing Kara’s collarbone. “Thank you. I could be contented to wake up like this every morning, with you.”

Kara’s smile grows wide under the affection coloring Lena’s tone, and she rolls her head to reach Lena’s lips. The kiss is soft and quick, but it beats in Lena’s chest as loud as a drum.

“Let’s reach our first then, yeah?” Kara says, and Lena can’t help but agree. She tightens her hold, and drifts to a peaceful sleep.

-

“I’d like to raise a toast to the former doctor of Harley Street, Miss Kara Danvers,” James yells. He is standing precipitously on a barstool, drunk off his ass. His head nearly brushes the ceiling of the Botanical Club. “I hope you enjoy America and all your Sears and Roebuck money, you devil.”

Kara, for her part, is sprawled in the largest booth at the club, a loud laugh escaping her throat. Her arm is slung over Lena’s shoulders on one side and Alex’s on the other. There is a great cheer at James’s words from the assorted occupants of the room. James gestures for everyone to quiet down with a great flapping of his arms. Winn is holding the stool in place beneath him, wincing every time he moves.

“We all know for certain that the Personal Massage Wand is the best possible way to get rid of all your aches and pains,” James says, to a round of laughter across the club. Kara tilts her head sideways along the back of the booth, where it bumps into Lena’s. The warmth between them is ever-present and insoluble. “But you were never an ache or pain, and we’ll be sad to be without you.” 

Here, he starts choking up, and nearly tumbles off the stool as everyone yells out their love for Kara. When he clambers down, Kara withdraws her arm from around her sister’s shoulders and reaches out to grip his hand when he climbs back into the booth. The moment is interrupted by M’gann arriving with a batch of glasses in her hands.

“We’ve got a round of whiskys from those ladies over there,” M’gann says, a grin on her face. “Say they owe you a drink for all your help.”

Alex’s face twists into a frown - a common expression on her face every time anyone so much as mentions Kara’s device or now former practice - but she seems happy enough to liberate the glasses from M’gann’s hands. She slides them along the table, where James has settled with Lucy on his lap and Winn tucked into his side; J’onn hovering at the end, his eyes half on the rowdy crowd of the bar; Kara and Lena in the center of the booth; then herself and Sam and Jess. Lena does not forgo noticing that Sam is halfway into Alex’s lap as well. 

“To Kara and Lena, and Chicago,” Jess says, a grin on her face as she stands up next to M’gann and away from the awfully indiscreet machinations of Sam and Alex’s flirtation. Everyone raises their glass and knocks back their glasses. Kara coughs a little as she swallows it down, her head tilting even further until it rests against Lena’s temple. Lena feels a kiss pressed into her hair there and smiles. “Can you imagine if I hadn’t tricked you into seeing her, Lena?”

“I’m certain I would have spent ten pounds on a Personal Massager,” Lena says. Alex frowns again, glaring heavily over the top of her glass at Lena before a smile breaks across her face. There’s happiness in her that she might have never had as Kara’s fingers trace into the hair at the nape of her neck, a laugh against her ear. 

“And now you live on the proceeds,” Winn jokes, and the whole table laughs uproariously. It is good and light, and Lena feels at home. Kara’s unoccupied hand slips beneath the table to grip Lena’s fingers, another kiss at her temple. 

“I love you,” Kara murmurs against her ear, and the warmth of it cascades through her body. She could certainly cry of happiness.

“I love you,” Lena returns. And there is nothing else but them.


End file.
